Daughters Deceived
by ArielOfAutumn
Summary: Ilyrana and Sarevok must now hunt down the remainder of their siblings to bring the Prophecy to a close. Tensions run high as a rift forms between Imoen and Ilyrana, and companions find themselves choosing sides. All the while Cyric works to manipulate the Prophecy to protect his position. Part 2 of Revelations and Reconciliation.
1. chapter 1

**Chapter 1: Mine**

 _"In Flames"_

 _Keep your confessions_

 _Cause babe I'm no saint_

 _We're playing with fire_

 _But I like this game_

 _And I know your devils_

 _I know them by name_

 _When you look my way_

 _Oh I'm not afraid_

 _With your kiss on my skin_

 _And this mess that we're in_

 _In flames_

 _We're going down, we're going down, we're going down_

 _In flames_

 _We're going down, we're going down, we're going down_

 _In flames_

 _We're going down, we're going down, we're going down_

 _In flames_

 _We're going down, we're going down, we're going down_

 _Love be my villain_

 _We're one and the same_

 _Got a heart full of bullets_

 _Cause we got good aim_

 _Come lay down beside me_

 _Be savaged and tamed_

 _You boil in my veins_

 _We won't ever change_

 _With your kiss on my skin_

 _And this mess that we're in_

 _In flames_

 _We're going down, we're going down, we're going down_

 _In flames_

 _We're going down, we're going down, we're going down_

 _In flames_

 _We're going down, we're going down, we're going down_

 _In flames_

 _We're going down, we're going down, we're going down_

 _We'll rise from the ashes and do it again_

 _We'll rise from the ashes and do it again_

 _We'll rise from the ashes and do it again_

 _And do it again, and do it again_

 _In flames_

 _We're going down, we're going down, we're going down_

 _In flames_

 _We're going down, we're going down, we're going down_

 _In flames_

 _We're going down, we're going down, we're going down_

 _In flames_

 _We're going down, we're going down, we're going down_

 _We'll rise from the ashes and do it again_

 _We'll rise from the ashes and do it again_

 _We'll rise from the ashes and do it again_

 _And do it again, and do it again_

 _-Digital Daggers_

 _ **Rana**_

Rana snarled in irritation as she realized she was right back in the middle of the room with the columns. Back in the place with the shadows and the doubts and the lies.

She knew she'd eventually end up here again one night while she slept. She just wished it wouldn't have been this soon.

In the dream, she heard someone begin slowly clapping from somewhere in the dark, the sound echoing up and down the room, making it difficult to know where it was coming from.

"I must say, you are my favorite for a reason. That was a spectacular performance, Ilyrana of Candlekeep. Bravo."

A man emerged out of the shadows, and his clapping ceased as he stopped a few yards away from her.

He wore the trappings of a rogue, all dark leather and extra pouches, with knives strapped on his thigh, and around one bicep. His hair was black and longish, his eyes too shadowed for her to make out their color, and there was a light dusting of stubble across his jaw. Handsome enough, in a generic sort of way, but there was something strangely magnetic about him, like he would draw her eye in a crowded room and she wouldn't be able to say why exactly.

He smiled at her, spreading his arms wide and turning a slow circle so she could finish examining him. When he faced her again, he looked like he found her curious perusal of him amusing, and pleasing.

Whatever, she knew where the rest of some of those knives were hidden now, at least. It was going to take a lot more than what he had to impress her, as at the moment, nothing short of a god could do that.

"Who the fuck are you?"

The man blinked, startled by either her bluntness or her ignorance of who he was. Which told her he thought he was important.

 _Narcissism, check._

"Who would you like me to be?"

Were this not a dream, and she'd run into this joker in a tavern, she'd have turned around and walked away at that line. But, because this was inside her head, and because it was obvious that he was the one running this show, she settled for giving him a bored look instead.

There was only one being who had ever been able to manipulate her dreams like this, forcing her to see something with the same strength that her subconscious wielded to keep her locked inside her nightmares.

But this wasn't Bhaal. She was almost sure of it.

The man chuckled, taking a step closer to her, and like trying to put the North poles of two magnets together, she felt herself shifting back involuntarily, repelled by his nearness.

The effect was deeply unsettling. That she simultaneously wanted to draw closer to him and yet not allow him a single step nearer.

He stopped, and that smile looked different than it had just a second ago. Because he had moved close enough to the light emitted by a nearby torch for her to clearly see his eyes. The irises were dark, perhaps a deep brown or even black. And staring into them made her feel like the ground had suddenly given way beneath her. Like she were tumbling down the rabbit hole, with the void rushing up to meet her. And he was that void.

"Who are you?" She asked again in a whisper, all bravado gone now.

"I think you know the answer," he whispered back, and it felt as if his reply came with his lips pressed to her ear, rather than from across from her.

Even though he hadn't moved any closer, she took another step away from him, and for the first time since she came to this dream, she found herself wondering why she couldn't feel Sarevok.

As if hearing her thoughts, the man's smile widened into a grin.

"Forgive me for barring your protector from this meeting, but I wanted you alone the first time I spoke with you."

Her wariness and unease morphed into true fear at his words, for a number of reasons.

"Now, Rana-" he paused. "May I call you 'Rana'? Or is that too intimate? You'll have to excuse my manners, while you aren't familiar with me, I am _very_ familiar with you, so it feels as if we are already well acquainted."

"Only my friends can call me 'Rana'," she replied quietly. "And you are no friend… Cyric, the Dark Sun."

His ensuing laugh made her skin crawl, because it made her want to smile, as if his amusement should be gratifying to her.

"Just Cyric, if you please, Rana. I was going to be deeply wounded if you couldn't figure out my identity for yourself."

The casual use of her nickname made her angry, but she tamped it down as best she could. She was alone, cut off from Sarevok, as if he'd brought her to a different plane, and there was no fighting him here.

"Or anywhere," he purred, finishing her thought aloud.

"Stop that!" She snapped before she could stop herself.

"My apologies. I'm afraid interacting with others is difficult for me at the best of times, and I am just coming down from a brief interlude of insanity, so I trust you'll forgive my rudeness."

His tone suggested she would forgive it whether she liked it or not.

"What do you want?" She asked, trying to keep her rising fear, and the anger that naturally tagged along with that emotion, out of her voice.

"Excellent question! But first, I'm sure you would appreciate a change of scenery, yes? No point in having a conversation while you are in a place that makes you uncomfortable."

 _Says the man who brought me to this particular memory in the first place._

He winked at her, reminding her, yet again, that he could hear her thoughts. She was screwed. She had a hard enough time controlling her tongue, there was no helping her knee jerk reactionary thought responses.

The room disappeared around them, bleeding into a different setting. A familiar one. A painfully familiar one.

"Here we are! I recall you feeling safe and comfortable here once, I trust this will ease that fiery temperament of yours so that we may speak amiably."

They were in Gorion's study in Candlekeep.

She swallowed down the tears trying to choke her up as she took in the room.

Soft, worn cushions covered a ring of plush chairs and sofas arranged around the fireplace. Bookshelves filled to bursting with carefully preserved tomes containing subjects that ranged in subject, from herblore to divination, animal husbandry to the history of Waterdeep, military strategy to a collection of poems written by long forgotten poets.

She could recite nearly all of the titles found herein, as she'd read most of them, save a few that Gorion expressly forbade. And only one of those unnerved her enough just by brushing its spine that she actually chose to obey him in this.

Sneaking in here, hoping for some new juicy romance novel, and the scandalous thrill of finding such a thing in her foster father's study, only to become distracted by one of these very texts. He'd caught her, eventually, curled up on the rug in front of the fire, fully engrossed in reading about troop formations based on differing terrains. She'd expected his ire, but it never came. Instead, he silently studied the cover of the book she had open, then went to one of the shelves and pulled down several more like it, setting them in a small stack atop the nearby coffee table.

From then on, every once in awhile, when she woke from a bad dream, or got annoyed with Imoen's pranks, she'd make her way up here, select a book, and curl up to lose herself in it. Sometimes, he'd make them both a cup of hot tea, sweetened with honey or flavored with fresh lemon. He rarely spoke to her on those nights he'd find her in here. Suspecting, and understanding, perhaps, her need for quiet, if not solitude.

As she breathed deep of the smell of parchment and smoldering oaken logs, her gaze finally settled on Cyric, who'd made himself comfortable in one of the chairs and was watching her exploration of the room and its memories. He nodded at the chair across from him.

Having no other choice, she sat, unable to stop from curling her legs beneath her as she'd always done when getting comfortable in this room.

"There. Better?"

"Not really. We both know you brought me here to throw me again, hoping to keep me off my guard. For what, though, I haven't figured out yet."

"I suppose your paranoia is to be expected, all things considered."

"You don't seem to want to dispute my observation, though."

"Because you're right," he answered, startling her with his sudden honesty. "Keeping you confused works to my advantage. I would ask your forgiveness in this as well, but that would imply I regret it, and I do not."

"You haven't told me what you want. Why you brought me to this dream."

"In due time, precious. First, I'm sure you have a lot of questions in regard to my dearly departed servant, Jorval."

She was pretty sure she'd rather him use her nickname over any sort of term of endearment. And judging by the mirth twinkling in those dark eyes, the more agitated she became with the casual, intimate way he addressed her, the more he was going to keep doing it.

Just now realizing the rest of what he'd said, she tried to focus. If she kept letting him throw her, she'd never be able to figure out what the hell was going on.

"Why did you bind your followers' magic? And not Jorval's?"

"Because they weren't _my_ followers. They followed him, not me."

"But they still worshipped you through him. I thought that's how the whole hierarchy of these sorts of establishments worked. The sheep go to the priests, who in turn go to the gods."

"'The sheep.' Yes, I suppose that's an accurate term. And yes, that is, at its crudest description, how this works. Or how it's supposed to. In this case, however, they worshipped Jorval, who worshipped himself. My name may have been slapped on what he was selling them, but I saw none of the returns."

Which was what she and Sarevok had suspected all along.

"So you prevented them from wielding power in your name, because they weren't really using it in your name. Why let Jorval off the hook, then? He was the fraud. I'm assuming he used his illusions to manipulate his church into giving him the praise rather than you."

"That's precisely what he did. One of my more faithful servants came through there some time back and left with the ones who could differentiate between a god and a worm with delusions of grandeur. Those that remained with Jorval were stripped of their magic, though they weren't made aware of this until you and your Deathbringer showed up on their doorstep."

"You do realize that Tiax, the one who took some of his followers away, is also a worm with delusions of grandeur, right?"

"Oh, absolutely! But you see, my dear, he is _my_ worm. And he suffers his delusions with far more grace than most."

"That's a matter of opinion, I suppose."

"Now, Rana," he chided with mock aggrievement. "Not all of us are so blessed with such fine a specimen of worshipper as say, your half-brother. Or that drow of yours. Or even the woodsman with the magical pedigree he tries to ignore."

"They follow me, they don't worship me."

"Do they not? Whose name burns in their minds if not on their lips when they go forth to do battle? To whom do they kill for? Whose secrets do they keep, even at their own expense? Which side of the line will they stand on when your decisions are questioned?"

"If those sorts of things are considered forms of worship, how is it we aren't overrun with gods? Every military leader, or political figurehead, or regent would be considered a deity."

"Ah, but not every military leader, political figurehead, or regent is a direct descendent of a god, now are they? You see, my sweet, there are several different ways a god can accrue power, but the easiest is through their followers. The number of them. And their quality."

"I am not worshipped," she whispered.

"Oh, but you are," he replied just as softly. "And not just by those closest to you. How many people do you think there are, scattered across this realm, that credit you for saving them? Or aiding them in some way? How many statues have been erected in your likeness? How many Bards sing of your exploits? How many enemies curse your name each time you evade them, or they are reminded of being undone by you? How many little girls pretend to be you when they play with their little friends? How many men's eyes linger on you when you walk by them, leaving them to covet what they cannot have? You've made your mark on this world. As have countless before you. The difference, though, the thing that separates you from them, is in your blood."

"What are you getting at, Cyric? And you never answered my question. Why did you leave Jorval's power intact?"

"In regards to Jorval, I initially hadn't dealt with him because of that bout of insanity I mentioned earlier. Then, once I realized you were going to swing by there eventually, I decided to wait and see what happened. I understand he was quite the nightmare for you when you were a child. Killing such a foe, one you feared and despised, one who was once so much more powerful than you, is far more satisfying if you have to work for it. Trust me in this."

 _He's referring to Bhaal._

Just thinking of her father made her queasy while she sat here with his killer.

"And," he continued, pretending he hadn't heard that particular thought. "I thought this experience would be humbling for you. Wouldn't want you getting above yourself, now would we? We've already spoken of delusions of grandeur, I see no need to go over that topic, again, do you?"

 _There it is. The reason why we're here._

"Very good, Rana," he purred, caressing her name in a way that made her want to gag. "You see, this little meet and greet serves several purposes. It allows us to finally get to know one another face to face. Well, not quite that. Trust me, I'm far more difficult to deal with in person, or so I'm told."

 _No fucking doubt about that._

"It also allows me to extend my warmest thanks for dealing with a small thorn in my side, by way of Jorval and his little temple. If he is, in fact, dead. With those pesky illusions, who's to say?"

Rana's stomach clenched at the thought of him still being alive. That he'd faked his death with yet another illusion.

It was possible. They could go back and find out, but she didn't know what she would do if she returned and his body wasn't there. The look in Cyric's eyes told her nothing. Nothing except that he found her sudden paranoia and doubt to be entertaining. She knew he wouldn't tell her if he was really dead or still alive. Because he wanted her to go check. And he knew she wouldn't.

"And, most importantly," he continued as if he didn't know of the turmoil he'd just caused her. "It gives me the opportunity to warn you."

"Warn me? You mean threaten me if I think about trying to usurp you."

"No, my Rana. Not threaten. You haven't done anything to warrant that. _Yet._ I would like to keep it that way, wouldn't you? No, I believe letting you off with just a warning is sufficient. I know you've thought about my position. What it must be like to hold the kind of power I do. And, believe me, it's far more now than you can even imagine. And I know your imagination is surprisingly vivid, though I can't tell if that's because of your divinity or just a quirk. Anyway, I digress. I'm warning you not to get too ambitious. As I said when I brought you here, you are my favorite among my predecessor's brood. You remind me a bit of myself when I was still mortal. Don't disappoint me. I have such high hopes for you."

"I was under the impression that you, and the other gods, have been limited by the Overfather in regards to meddling with the prophecy," she replied sweetly, finally able to use this bit of leverage that she'd learned from her clerics after reuniting with them outside of Suldanessellar. "So, while I appreciate the warning, I think your words are just that. Words. With no power behind them. Not until this thing is over. Not while you still have to abide by what Ao says."

He smiled again, and this time, there was no amusement in his eyes. Slowly, he rose from his chair, and as he walked towards her, the room melted away, leaving them both in utter darkness. All she could see was him, and when she tried to back away, to maintain distance, she found she couldn't move. When he stood just before her, gazing down at her with a cold, calculating look, all traces of flirtiness and good humor gone, she realized just how much of an act it all had been.

An illusion.

Leaning over her, he put his lips to her ear, and she could feel herself beginning to wake as he released her from the dream. But not before he whispered one last thing.

"And when have I ever been known to follow the rules, Ilyrana?"

 ** _Sarevok_**

Reflexively reaching for his sword as he was jarred awake, Sarevok gripped the hilt of the Sword of Chaos beside him, sitting up, gasping for air in a cold sweat. The feel of his weapon gave him little comfort.

With his other hand, he reached for Rana, his fingers tangling in her hair before grazing her shoulder, then sliding down her back. She mumbled something in her sleep, something about sheep, he thought, but didn't rouse.

It was just a dream. It hadn't been real. None of it.

The canopy of leaves far above his head was too thick to allow him to judge the time of day. That itwasday was all he could tell.

Releasing his deathgrip on both the sword and Rana, he rubbed at his eyes, trying to disperse the images that still lingered behind them.

It was that fight with Jorval and his illusions, only this time, it had been his step mother that he ran through. As he'd fumbled for a healing potion, she'd whispered that she was glad that she died before she could watch him turn into a monster. Before he became like Rieltar.

Her words had cut into him just as brutally as the garrote had to her. Before he could even respond to her, to deny or justify his actions, Rana had appeared. He watched as he attacked her, accusing her of being another illusion. Just another shadow puppet of Jorval's. Watched as she begged him to stop, to believe that she was telling the truth about being real.

In the dream, he didn't release his hold on her throat as he had actually done. Instead, he dropped his sword so he could use both hands to strangle her to death. Blood vessels popped in her eyes, staining the amber. It was impossible to tell how long he had to watch her die, as time does not follow its own rules within nightmares. But it was long enough that the scene was now branded into his mind.

He woke just as Rieltar clapped him on the shoulder and told him a garrote was a far better tool than his own hands, but he was proud of him nonetheless.

Rana murmured something again and rolled over, facing him, the blanket falling to her waist.

Yellowish bruises dotted her neck, from nearly doing to her what he did in the dream, interspersed with faint red bite marks. More of those marred her breasts, more evidence of his loss of control. More bruising, and cuts, around one of her arms, from grasping her in the dark of the temple, when he'd held onto her to reassure himself she was there beside him. Yet more purple and yellow discoloration on her hips, where he'd clutched her mercilessly while he took her.

 _"Anything good in me began with you, my son,"_ his step mother had whispered in the dream. _"And ended when you followed in **both** your fathers' footsteps."_

He had sacrificed everything to achieve his ambition of becoming Bhaal. His humanity, his mentor, Tamoko, his life. He'd never realized how much like Rieltar he'd become in the process. Willing to destroy those closest to him to attain what he wanted. Sarevok had justified what he'd done, but then, Rieltar had felt justified, too. If he'd even cared enough to think about it, that is. Even when godhood was out of his reach, he'd still ruthlessly tried to manipulate Rana to gain what he could through her.

And when he finally set that ambition aside, and she'd given herself to him, he'd hurt her yet again, unaware of the damage he was inflicting upon her body. Because he'd drowned himself in his lust, in his need to claim, after all this time, what should have been his all along. And he did so not long after nearly killing her in that temple.

All that had mattered in that moment was she was finally his at last.

To make matters worse, gazing down at her, he wanted her again. Even knowing he'd caused her pain, and would risk doing so again, he couldn't stop himself from reacting to the sight of her asleep beside him.

And, deep down, in the darker recesses of his heart, his marks on her flesh stirred him. The bruises and the bites were a physical affirmation that she now belonged to him, that she'd submitted to him in the end.

"You're being creepy," Rana mumbled, her eyes still closed, likely feeling the intensity of his stare.

He didn't respond, too busy trying to force himself to rise and put some space between them before his will crumbled even further. When she opened her eyes to look up at him, her sleepy expression and tousled hair was so like what he'd imagined it would be when he'd fantasized about waking up next to her that he reached for her before he'd even told his body to move.

Her eyes slid closed when his fingers trailed up her arm to slip sable locks away from her face. When they brushed against the bruises on her throat, she winced slightly, just a few tiny creases around the eyes, but it was enough to bring everything crashing back down around him.

Jerking his hand away as if she'd scalded him, the words of his step parents echoed in his mind, and he moved to get away from her.

"Seriously?" She asked, anger and hurt rising in her hoarse voice. "I swear to the gods, if you get all weird about this, I'm leaving your ass here."

She sat up, wincing again, and turned away from him to find her clothes. He couldn't stop his eyes from roaming over her, and he clenched his hands in fury that she affected him this strongly. He remembered hoping once that this would get her out of his system. He'd been a fool. She was so deeply imbedded now that he doubted even causing her pain could force him to shake her loose.

Suddenly realizing she was dead serious about leaving, he hauled her back to the bedroll, his anger magnified by the knowledge that he'd probably just hurt her yet again.

"You're not going anywhere," he hissed at her as he pressed her down into the bedroll, struggling to be gentle while he grappled with the panicked insanity brought on by the dream, yesterday, and the prospect of her leaving him.

"Then stop freaking out about this!"

"I'm not freaking out!"

"Are, too! Look, I get it, this is all overwhelming for me, too, but damn, can't you just… give this a chance? I mean, I'm not expecting anything of you, just that you don't try and shut me out because you don't know how to process this yet."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Um, I woke up trying to remember what it was I was just dreaming about, and I could feel you glaring at me. Then you pulled away, because I know you, you're struggling to come to terms with everything that happened yesterday, not just at the temple, but telling me about our soul being merged since childhood, and being stuck together because of it, and then coming here to our tree and-"

"You think sleeping with you scares me?!"

Which, in a way, it did, but not in the way she thought. He was bad for her, he knew this, but he wasn't nearly noble enough to give her up and walk away. He just needed to get away from her so she could heal while he worked on getting this strangling need under control, and getting his strength in check, before putting his hands on her again. He didn't trust himself not to hurt her, and his fear that he'd enjoy it if he did was incentive enough to stay away.

 _I will not be like Rieltar. I will not revel in causing her pain. Not her._

"Why else would you be acting weird?!" She yelled at him, sitting up when he allowed her to move, and he sat back on his knees.

"It couldn't possibly have anything to do with _that!"_ He roared back, gesturing at the bruises.

She looked down at the ones on her hips, and he indicated the ones on her throat, too.

"You're upset because you think you hurt me?" She asked, looking baffled, which pissed him off even more, as if this weren't something to be concerned with.

"I _did_ hurt you! I nearly killed you when I thought you were an illusion! And I lost all control with you and now you can barely move without hurting!"

"Your concern is sweet, really, but wholly unwarranted."

Her dismissal only fanned the flames of his ire.

 _"Unwarranted?! You're covered in bruises and you wince with every movement, and you say it's **unwarranted**?!"_

"It's not like you did it on purpose. And I'm not complaining."

He looked at her as if she were mad. His only comforting thought was that she believed it had been entirely accidental.

"You're not upset that I left you bruised and sore, and that half your injuries came from me trying to kill you because I thought you weren't real," he said in a flat tone.

"Honestly, I'd be pretty upset if I _weren't_ bruised and sore. After all that build up over the past couple weeks, if I woke up and could immediately feel my legs I probably woulda left."

"This isn't a godsdamned joke, Rana!"

"I'm kinda not joking," she mumbled under her breath, then huffed and shook her head at him. "If you're that concerned about me being in pain, then dig out a healing potion. And about almost killing me, you thought I was an illusion, and that you already _had_ killed me, so you get a pass on that. Unless you _want_ me to be angry with you?"

She was insane. There was no other explanation.

Leaning over to reach for his bag, he drew out the potion on the first try, frowning at the memory of not being able to find it when he'd thought he needed it yesterday.

She gave him a patient kind of look as she took a few swallows from it. Handing it back, she lightly poked around her neck, no wincing this time.

"Happy now?"

He grinded his teeth in answer, seething from her flippant attitude about something that was tearing him up inside. She rolled her eyes.

"You know, I think I changed my mind. I _am_ mad at you. I can't remember anything of what I was dreaming about before I woke up. And I feel like it was important somehow. Did you see anything from it? Or were you up half the night being creepy and watching my bruises form?"

"No, I was having my own dream this time."

Her eyes softened as she heard something in his voice or read something on his face that indicated his dream had been... unpleasant.

"Do you wanna talk about it?" She asked, reclining back in the bedroll and pulling the blanket up to her chin.

Her naked body abruptly being covered, when he hadn't yet satisfied his need to explore it, had him tugging the blanket right back off again. The cold be damned.

The sudden glow in her eyes, and the way they went from concerned to aroused in a heartbeat, quickened his pulse and stoked the still smoldering embers of his wrath and possessiveness.

It was a dangerous combination, those two emotions, and she was already unknowingly adept at bringing them to the fore prior to last night. Now, the need to mark her again with his teeth, since the healing potion had smoothed those blemishes away from her fair skin, so that there would be some kind of visible claim upon her, had him snatching her up, pulling her off the bedroll and up against his chest.

He was losing it. The fight. And his mind. But still he continued.

With one arm around her lower back, holding her flush against him, he used his other to smooth her hair to the side, revealing the slender column of her neck. As if knowing, and understanding, what he was doing, she tilted her head back and to the side, exposing her throat to him. Submitting to this unexplainable animal need to possess her completely in every way.

Her whimper when he brushed his lips against the scars on the side of her neck had him adjusting her so that she straddled him, and his arm flexed tightly around her when his cock slid against her heat.

"Do you have any idea how maddening this is?" He murmured against her throat, breathing in the addictive scent of her.

He wouldn't know what her reply would have been, as the words she tried to speak were lost in a throaty cry when his mouth clamped down on the spot between her neck and shoulder. Gripping his arms, her nails biting deep into his skin, she clung to him as he lifted her just enough to sheath himself inside her.

"It's as if I've been infected with the taint again. Like I've lost all control once more, only this time, the sole focus of its desires is you…"

He was walking along the knife's edge, and if he plummeted, he would wake with her broken beneath him, her cries of pleasure long since turned to pain and fear. But the longer he managed to keep his balance, the deeper he was cut while just trying to hold on, trying to keep his sense of self, even when he no longer knew who that man was anymore.

"No… the sole focus has always been you," he rasped in her ear as his hands circled her hips to press her further down his length. "The taint, the prophecy, our father, all of it was just in the way before."

A small sound, followed by her pressing her face to his chest, and then his name whispered in a torn, pleading gasp. It drove him wild, and before he could remember that he was doing everything in his power to walk the line with her, he pushed her down onto her back, pinning her throat with his hand, wedged so deep inside of her that he couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.

"You're _mine,"_ he hissed, rising up to stare down at her, madness glowing in his eyes, as he began to lose the fight against the maelstrom inside his head.

The memories of his step-mother bled into the dream that had jarred him awake. His memories of Rieltar did the same. The illusions at the temple toyed with the end results like a child playing with paints.

He would not lose her. Not to death. Not to Jorval. Not to Gorion. Not to Bhaal. Not to Rieltar. Not to another lover. Not to Irenicus. _No one_ and _nothing_ could take her from him now.

 _"Does she feel real, son of Bhaal? The harder you believe, the more solid she becomes, so what does it even matter if that's not really her?"_

"Sarevok-"

 _"Say it! Tell me you belong to me now."_

Gently, she wrapped her fingers around the ones pressed against her throat. With her other hand, she reached up to touch his chest. The scar from her killing blow. Her eyes, glazed with desire only seconds ago, now seemed to see straight into him. Piercing through the storm wall to look into the agony, the rage, the brutality, the terror, churning inside him.

When she finally answered him, she spoke aloud and within him, her words reverberating through the depths of their soul.

"I am yours." _And you are mine._

His hold on her throat loosened before he slid his hand to the back of her neck, pulling her to him as he leaned forward to kiss her. It was that gallows kiss again. That feeling that any second now, she would disappear from beneath him. Her scent and her touch all that lingers, like the echoes of his dream.

"Rana…"

Sliding an arm beneath her, he went to his back, pulling her up to straddle him. He couldn't hurt her, he _wouldn't_ hurt her. Wrapping his hands around her waist, it took every ounce of will to hold himself together at the sight of her atop him.

That cascade of dark chocolate hair brushed his thighs as she tilted her head back, the glow of her eyes winking out as they slid shut. The hypnotic roll of her hips; her lips, wet from their kiss, parted on a moan, rendered him incapable of thought, for which he was grateful. Her nails dug into his stomach, and he could feel the muscles of her thighs clenching around his as she moved.

When she opened her eyes to look down at him, and they shimmered honey gold in the filtered sunlight, he reached up to cup her face, his thumb gliding across her bottom lip before dipping into her mouth. His breath hissed out as he felt her tongue twine around it, and his hips bucked up at the sensation, her breasts swaying with the sudden motion.

"Say it again," he quietly commanded, his voice roughened but no longer with that wild obsessiveness constricting his chest.

That feeling had changed, shifting in its intensity, from savagery to something he had no name for. She met his wounded rage with a sweetness that gentled it. But beneath that sweetness was something just as chaotic and all-consuming. It called to him.Shecalled to him. And he was helpless not to obey.

"I'm yours," she whispered, eyes boring into his as the agonizingly slow rhythm she had set began to increase.

"Mine. Mine alone."

"Yes. Yours alone."

Her head fell back as she moved against him faster still, those maddening sounds she made growing louder as he felt her grow closer to her peak. It was a sight that would stay with him till his death, he was sure. And it burned away the imprint of his dream.

Sitting up, one hand braced on the bedroll, his other fisting in her hair, he held her tightly against him as he moved with her, his face a breath away from hers, forcing her to look at him as she came. She stared into his eyes as long as she could, until the strength of her release forced them shut, and she trembled against him with each shuddering wave that rolled through her, his name cried out with each breaking crest.

He tried to withstand the pull of her flesh, the demand of her body to join hers in surrender, but it was impossible to resist that siren's song. Swearing her name like a curse, he pulled her down as he thrust one last time up into her, filling her with his seed.

Collapsing onto his back, he threaded his fingers through her hair, her head on his chest as they both tried to remember how to breathe.

"Are you alright?" She asked him after a moment, raising her face to look at him, her eyes sparkling with humor.

The sight helped to further ease the chaos inside of him.

"Yeah. You?"

"Mmm," she purred, snuggling into him, and he absently threw the blanket over them.

"You gonna tell me what that was about?" She asked, her fingers idly tracing nonsense patterns into his chest.

"I'd rather not, but I suppose I owe you an explanation."

After several minutes of trying to collect his thoughts into a coherent enough reply, he eventually gave up and tapped her soul to let him in. It would be easier just to show her.

He felt her stiffen as she saw his step-mother. Her nails dug in at the memories surrounding Rieltar. And when she felt his emotional state upon waking from the dream, and his subsequent turmoil over seeing her bruises, coupled with his conflicting reaction to them, he waited for her anger. For some kind of disgust or feeling of betrayal at how causing her pain hadn't been completely accidental or lamented.

"You're a bit of an idiot at times, you know that, right?"

Folding the pillow beneath his head to rise up enough to look down at her, he didn't even bother trying to puzzle out why she would say that. He needed to stop being surprised at how she never seemed to react how he expected her to. He'd once considered himself fluent in how women's minds worked. At least as much as a man was able to be at any given moment. Most of his previous relationships, however, couldn't prepare him for her.

"I mean, I _know_ you," she went on, propping her chin in her hand as she rested her elbow on his chest. "We're cut from the same cloth, for starters. And I was clued in to your sadistic streak as far back as when we were children. I never expected that to be nonexistent during sex."

"Rana, what Irenicus did-"

"Stop. I know I've drawn comparisons between the two of you before, but consent is one of the many dividing lines here. I wanted this. I want _you._ There's a huge difference between being hurt by someone I don't want touching me, and being hurt in the throes by someone I very much want touching me. Besides, we're Bhaalspawn. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say it's probably par for the course."

"You don't know how long I've struggled with this, Rana. How much I've had to hold back in order to prevent wounding the woman I was with."

"Probably as long as I have. I've had… complaints before. Mind you, I can't inflict the kind of damage you can, but still. Most men don't like to be reminded that I'm not a delicate flower or a butterfly in danger of having its wings dusted."

Sarevok sighed and rolled onto his side, pulling her leg over his waist to keep her close, and looked down at her.

He felt a weight on his shoulders begin to lighten. As small and lithe as she was, she certainly wasn't fragile. He didn't know if her admission that she shared in his sadomasochistic tendencies made things easier, because all it did was inflame this still raging inferno inside of him. And he still didn't want to be the kind of man that got off on terrorizing the woman he bedded. A man like Rieltar.

As if reading his thoughts, she reached up to run her fingers down his cheek, her eyes soft with understanding.

"A day at a time. We have enough shit to wade through, there's no need to add more to the pile. I'll tell you if you do something I don't like. As I expect you to do the same with me."

"As you would have it."

"What was her name?"

"Who?"

"Your step-mother."

Sarevok took a deep breath and pulled her closer, not even surprised when his body responded to the silken curves pressed against him. This insatiability wouldn't do, but it was difficult to be angry about it at the moment.

Years ago, after learning the truth of his parentage, and long after her death, he woke one night from a dream of his step-mother. Tears had wetted his pillow, and he'd been disgusted with himself for such weakness. She was dead. He would get revenge on her behalf, but wallowing in memories of her and missing her presence would only serve to weaken him. He'd buried everything to do with her in one of the mass graves hidden away in his heart, her tombstone standing as a reminder of what he owed Rieltar, and nothing more.

Thinking her name would unearth her. Saying it aloud would release her ghost. But had that not already come to pass? He'd dreamt of her again, after all these years. Perhaps it was time.

"Ravenna."

"She was beautiful."

"Yes. She was. It was a political match, her and Rieltar. I think, perhaps, for a time, he was good to her. Before coming to Baldur's Gate, when they still lived in Sembia. It was there that he met a dwarf, one of the last of his clan that had died in a mine accident in the Cloakwood forest. Rieltar befriended him, and upon hearing the dwarf's tale, he hired him as a blacksmith for the Iron Throne. I think the knowledge that there was a mine, still rich in resources, just waiting to be drained, was what began Rieltar's descent. I believe he was always a callous, ambitious bastard, but he was hamstrung in his attempts to garner wealth and power. Until he learned of that mine."

"Yeslick Orothair."

"Yes… that's right. He fought alongside you did he not?"

"Mmm. When we went to the Cloakwood Mine, he was enslaved down there, and we freed him and accepted his aid. He told me about Rieltar and everything that transpired between them. What he failed to mention, though, was that he was the one who forged your sword."

"Yes, I believe it was him. Winski never told me his name, only that he had good reason to despise Rieltar, and it hadn't taken much to convince the dwarf to create a weapon that would strike him down. Of course, I didn't sully the Sword of Chaos with his blood, I used a garrote."

"I remember him being conflicted about wanting to kill him. He wanted revenge, but he felt bad for wanting it. I think he was relieved that you had gotten to him before we could. That even though he wasn't the one to do it, the man who wielded his sword was a good enough compromise. He probably never brought up the topic of forging the blade because he knew it was being used for purposes far more nefarious than killing Rieltar."

"Hmm. Well, he wouldn't have been wrong about that."

Rana snorted and sat up, rolling her neck until it cracked.

"He was one of the ones I wrote to. He could be joining us, if he already isn't at the house when we get back."

"It's amusing you think I'll be letting you return."

She looked down at him with one delicate brow raised, and she tensed as if preparing for a fight.

"I jest, little one. Mostly. The idea of absconding with you is appealing, I won't deny it. I've had you to myself for not nearly long enough, and I don't look forward to having to share you with your fools once more."

"Of course, the sooner we finish this war, the sooner we can lose my fools."

"Indeed," he agreed absently, running the back of his hand down her side, the thought of them not returning taking root in his mind. "If I knew we faced anything less than a drow ensconced in some deep hole we'll have hell digging her out of, and a dragon, I would propose that we wouldn't need their help going forward."

"I still need to mend things with Imoen," she murmured, running her fingers through her hair to get the tangles out.

"I doubt that discovering you share my bed will do anything to help that. And I expect Jaheira won't react well either. I do, however, look forward to Anomen's reaction."

Rana rolled her eyes at that.

"Look, we already left a mess behind just by leaving the way we did. And there'll probably be an even bigger one when we get back if some of the others have started showing up. Until I can get things to die down, we shouldn't broadcast this."

Sarevok sat up and turned her face to look at him.

"Only moments ago you told me you were _mine._ I'm not going to hide that fact just to spare someone's feelings. _Especially_ those three."

"Not even for me? Not even to spare more turmoil, for a brief time? I'm not saying for the entirety of this campaign. Just for a little while."

"You expect to just return to your room at night, and me to mine? Is that what you're saying?"

Resting her chin on his shoulder, she looked beseechingly up at him, begging him with her eyes.

"Don't you dare," he growled, looking away from her.

Using her fingertips, she turned him back to look at her, ratcheting up the pathetic look by leagues until he sighed in defeat.

"As if I can deny you anything, little vixen. Fine! A fortnight, Rana, no longer."

"A fortnight. Deal."

"We should start heading back. Before you make me agree to anything else."

"Probably a good idea. Ya know, Rook needs some company…"

Minutes later, the pair left their tree behind, silently vowing to someday return.

As the sun moved across the horizon, and they began nearing Tor Niedrig, Rana gasped and pulled her horse up short.

"What is it?"

Her eyes were wide, and she'd gone paler than usual.

"Rana, what's wrong?"

"I just remembered my dream."


	2. Slipping

**Chapter 2: Slipping**

 _Dig up her bones but leave the soul alone_

 _Boy with a broken soul_

 _Heart with a gaping hole_

 _Dark twisted fantasy turned to reality_

 _Kissing death and losing my breath_

 _Midnight hours cobble street passages_

 _Forgotten savages, forgotten savages_

 _Dig up her bones but leave the soul alone_

 _Let her find a way to a better place_

 _Broken dreams and silent screams_

 _Empty churches with soulless curses_

 _We found a way to escape the day_

 _Dig up her bones but leave the soul alone_

 _Lost in the pages of self made cages_

 _Life slips away and the ghosts come to play_

 _These are hard times_

 _These are hard times for dreamers_

 _And love lost believers_

 _Dig up her bones but leave the soul alone_

 _Let her find a way to a better place_

 _Broken dreams and silent screams_

 _Empty churches with soulless curses_

 _We found a way to escape the day_

 _Candy bar creep show_

 _My highs hit a new low_

 _Marinate in misery_

 _Like a girl of only seventeen_

 _Man made madness_

 _And the romance of sadness_

 _Beautiful dance that happened by chance_

 _Happened by chance, happened by chance_

 _Dig up her bones but leave the soul alone_

 _Let her let her let her let her find her way back home_

 _Broken dreams and silent screams_

 _Empty churches with soulless curses_

 _We found a way to escape the day_

 _-Bones by MS MR_

 ** _Rana_**

"Ah, my small friend, it is good to see you again! Aerie and I were just wondering what became of you when we received your letter. Glad I am to be putting the boot to evil's ugly face once more!"

 _"Can't breathe… need oxygen to live…"_

"Oops!" Minsc laughed, releasing Rana from his bear hug and gently lowering her to the floor. "Boo has spoken to me of watching my strength with the smallers. 'Pretend they are me.' He tells me. And I would not crush _him,_ so I must remember."

"No problem, how important can internal organs be, I mean really?" Rana grumbled, massaging her ribs.

"Rana? Oh, I'm so happy to see you well!"

The next embrace was much more welcome. The heavy scent of lavender engulfed her senses as she buried her face in Aerie's gleaming golden hair. The slightly taller, willowy avariel didn't pose nearly as much a threat with her hugs as the ranger did.

"I'm glad you came, Aerie," Rana whispered.

"As am I," she whispered back, releasing her and stepping away to examine the other woman. "How've you been? No, I know you need to greet the others first. We'll talk later, though, I hope? Oh, and I've been working on a new salve, I'd like to try it on your back if time permits."

Her bonds with the other women had all been forged and enhanced by their trials together, but the one that Aerie and Rana shared went a bit beyond the norm.

Unlike Jaheira and Haer'Dalis, Aerie was pure elven, as Rana was. And, like Rana, she had not only been tortured and maimed, but had had something precious stolen from her as well. Aerie would never fly. Rana would never bear children.

"Rana, darling, you aren't seriously going to make _me_ beg for a hug, are you? I mean, for you I might, but I'll make you pay for it later."

Chuckling, Rana briefly embraced Safana, who had emerged from her perch atop the railing of the staircase.

"I'm surprised you answered my letter, Safana."

"Really? After I heard you tore Eldoth into pieces back in Athkatla, you think I could stay away? Besides, you've always had a knack for attracting the most handsome men to your side. I was just admiring the recent additions to your haram, but I admit seeing your half-brother again was something I thought to be merely an overblown rumor. I'd _love_ to hear that story."

"Sarevok? Is that who that is?" Minsc asked, stepping right up to Sarevok and peering into his face, forcing him to immediately jerk away from the ranger's sudden intrusion into his personal bubble. "I must admit I did not recognize him without the spiky armor. Are you sure it is him, Rana? He is not yelling. Minsc is confused."

 _Oh, it was so worth inviting Minsc._

"I'll start yelling if you and your rodent don't back away, addled one!" Sarevok exclaimed, leaning away from Minsc, who was eyeing him suspiciously, Boo balanced in his hand, his whiskers twitching as he sniffed violently in the Deathbringer's direction.

"Boo says it is you, but not you. This confuses Minsc. How can you be Sarevok if you are not Sarevok?"

 _So, so worth it._

"Seriously, girl. Minsc isn't the only one confused. I thought I watched him die. Or was I high?" Safana asked her, crossing her arms and tilting her head as she looked Sarevok up and down.

"Long story. It's him, though. He's on our side now."

"This… this is your half-brother?" Aerie asked nervously. "The same man who killed your foster father? And he fights beside you now? I have to admit, I'm confused as well. How could you be comfortable with that? And how did you resurrect him?"

"I'll catch y'all up later, I promise," Rana reassured them, not looking forward to that _at all._ "Do you know where the others are at, by the way?"

As soon as she and Sarevok walked through the doors of her home, she had been swept up by Minsc, and hadn't seen a sign of Imoen and the rest.

"After dinner, some of them headed out for patrols. I believe Imoen and Haer'Dalis went for a walk, and Keldorn and Anomen are upstairs in their rooms. We all started showing up yesterday."

"Ranger, this is your last warning! Stop prodding me with that hamster or I'll feed it to the cat!"

As if on cue, a loud _MERP!_ rang out from the dining room, followed by the sound of galloping, something one doesn't often expect to hear from a kitten.

"There you are, sweet boy," Rana cooed, bending down to catch the gray cat as he leapt into her arms, purring furiously. "We were gone almost three days and you already feel heavier. Chauntia has been sneaking you treats, hasn't she?"

"He's been sulking since you left, how could I not?" The girl said from the nearby dining room doorway. "I'm glad you're both home, safe and sound."

"Me too. Thank you for looking out for him while we were away."

"Rana, if you don't call off this deranged creature, and his pet Rashemi, I'll be forced to do something violent!"

"Alright, Minsc, down boy. You can study him later," Rana said, suppressing a laugh at Sarevok's indignant expression, which was magnified by her words.

"Had I known this particular rumor were true, I would never have come, Ilyrana," a painfully familiar voice intoned from near the staircase.

Materializing from the shadows, Kivan stepped forward, his longbow in one hand, and those striking green eyes hard with disapproval and disgust.

"I don't know why you came at all in the first place," Rana sneered, stepping away in shock. "I don't recall sending you a letter. How the hell did you find me?"

"Imoen wrote me."

Fury coursed through her veins, and she clenched her fists as she glared up at her former lover. Why would Imoen do that? It had to have been weeks ago, long before their standoff.

"Well, I don't know why she did, and I'm sorry you made the trip, but if you already have a problem, you are more than welcome to leave. Viconia's with me, too, and I don't wanna have to listen to you antagonize her like you did before."

"My issues with the drow pale in comparison to you somehow bringing that butcher back," Kivan replied, shifting his weight and squaring his shoulders as Sarevok turned to him from across the entryway. "You may have taken leave of your sanity, Ilyrana, but your sister hasn't. She was wise to believe my presence was needed. I couldn't ever imagine just how much though."

"Careful, elf," Sarevok said softly, his voice like growing thunder. "I have no quarrel with you, but if you insist, I would be more than happy to change that."

"Your thug, Tazok, tortured my wife to death!"

"And then, if I remember correctly, you hit Tazok in the face with a detonation arrow," Rana drawled. "Last warning, Kivan. Reign it in or leave. My tolerance for inter-party fighting has long since reached its limit."

"You travel with a drow and a paladin of Torm, a Harper and this monster, and gods only know what other corners of Hell you've dipped into to find more companions, and you expect everyone to just get along?!"

"Yup."

"I'd hoped you'd managed to mature some over these past few years, Ilyrana, but I see that even at my age, I can still be naive."

"Oh, Kivan, I could have already told you that," Rana sneered.

"Well, in Rana's defense, she's always had a knack for making even the most ill-tempered of people willing to fight beside anyone she asks them to," Aerie giggled, oblivious to the tension in the room.

Kivan looked at the avariel, cleared his throat as if to reply, then looked away, his cheeks reddening slightly.

 _Oh, now **that** is interesting._

"Make your choice," Rana exhaled, weary and ready to be done with this. "If you can't play nice, like the others have more or less learned to do, then you need to leave."

"Can we speak in private?" He eventually asked her after a moment of consideration.

 _"No,"_ Sarevok replied before Rana could speak. "Bury the past now ranger, or I'll make sure it buries _you."_

"Enough, brother."

Kivan glared at Sarevok, and the Deathbringer returned it in full. That was one fight that Rana did not wish to see. Not while Sarevok was unarmored, anyway.

"Keep your dog on a short leash, Ilyrana. So long as he keeps his distance, I will keep mine."

 _Not surprising. It's harder to make a kill if he's within close range, isn't it, Kivan?_

"Fine. Anyone else show up, or is this it?"

"We are the only ones who've arrived. Who else did you invite?" Aerie asked.

"Doesn't matter. I'm going to go speak with Keldorn. I hope you've all been apprised of what's going on?"

"Bad drow and big dragon," Safana yawned.

"Okay, if Keldorn agrees, I'd like to move on the drow within a day or two, so everyone get some rest."

Going up the stairs, she briefly dropped by her room to set Rook down on her bed and throw her bag of holding and sword belt onto her desk. As soon as time permitted, she needed a bath.

Just as she reopened her bedroom door to go speak with Keldorn, Sarevok barged in and slammed it, and then locked it, behind him.

"My memories of your former companions is a bit dim, Rana," he said without preamble, advancing on her as he spoke so that she was forced to take a few steps back. "But that elf conjures up a feeling I've only just recently become acquainted with, thanks to you. Who is he to you?"

 _I was wondering why the "I have no quarrel with you" remark seemed so out of character._

"The fact that you feel the need to ask kind of already answers that, doesn't it? We were together, briefly."

"What happened?"

"He's an asshole?"

"Considering that _I_ now share your bed, this does nothing to reassure me."

 _Reassure you? Scared I leave assholes just as quickly as I acquire them?_

"Well, you heard him, Tazok tortured and killed his wife. I was just recently sprung from Candlekeep, thanks to you, and he was the first elf, Elvenhair notwithstanding, that I'd met, and I found his broad shoulders and devotion to his departed wife to be attractive."

Fighting back a chuckle at his glare, she continued.

"It just sort of happened. He was an experienced ranger, I was an up and coming one. We were both elves. One thing led to another. Then he decided it didn't work and I agreed and we parted ways."

"Now, I want you to tell me again, only this time without the half-truths."

Sighing, she stepped closer to him and looked down at one of the scars on his forearm, tracing the silvery line with a fingertip, and avoiding his gaze as she told him the truth.

"I wasn't lying when I said it just sort of happened. There wasn't much courting, it was the result of constantly being pursued by assassins and the everyday fight for survival. He wanted me to be like his Deheriana, though he didn't say so at first. I figured that one out on my own, but it didn't bother me, I wasn't interested in anything serious, anyway. He… eventually voiced complaints that I was too… intense. Nothing like his wife, who was gentler and sweeter. And when he told me that made it difficult to pretend I was her, and being with me already felt like a betrayal to her memory, it stopped. I wasn't upset, and we still shared a common goal, so he remained a part of the group till the end. I haven't seen or heard from him since he left Baldur's Gate a few days after we killed you."

She didn't really know how she expected him to react. Growls and threats that if Kivan looked at her too long then he wouldn't be responsible for killing him. Something along those lines, perhaps. She had no way of knowing how to handle this, as neither Kivan nor Yoshimo had ever expressed any sort of possessiveness. When Sarevok lifted her chin to look at him, the simmering anger in his eyes wasn't surprising, but the understanding was, even if it shouldn't have been.

"You mentioned this morning that you'd had complaints about your ferocity in the bedroom. You were referring to him weren't you?"

"And Yoshimo," she murmured.

The understanding overtook the anger, but only by a margin.

"It disgusts me that his confession to using you as a placeholder for his dead wife doesn't infuriate you as it should. Were you to tell me that you thought of another while I was inside you, I would _lose my mind,_ Rana. That you act like this is okay is beyond imagining. "

"Fine. You want me to rant about how much that stings?" She snapped. "That my first romance was all an illusion I knowingly played along with because I was young and stupid enough to believe he'd grow to want me for _me?_ And that my second relationship was a lie? That I found out days ago, in this very room, in the letter from Yoshimo that he did actually lo… care about me, which is even worse than if he hadn't? Is that what you want to hear?! How is that any better, Sarevok?"

"There it is," he whispered absently, his thumb brushing across her cheekbone. "Eventually, I hope we'll reach the point where I won't have to goad your wrath to get you to put aside the jokes and the deflections and just be honest with me. And yourself. The elf is an idiot, as was your bounty hunter. But the latter is dead and gone, and the former can barely keep his eyes off the blonde, and I'm selfish enough to admit that his error in judgment with you in the past works to my advantage now."

"Even if you weren't here, I still wouldn't consider pursuing him again," she mumbled. "It's not just that he's a dick, it's… well, he's elven."

"That didn't bother you before… oh, I see."

She looked away.

Elven males were something she didn't think she'd ever be able to feel attracted to again. Not after being subjected to Irenicus. Which greatly limited her romantic options, as falling in love with someone who didn't share in her long life was suicide.

 _Oh, look. A non-elven immortal male. Just my luck._

Pushing away the thought of how strangely perfect Sarevok was for her, in this _one_ regard, she glanced back up at him.

"You noticed his interest in Aerie."

"Mmm. If a man can tear his eyes away from _you_ in favor of another female, then it must mean something."

Rana snorted and rolled her eyes at him, even though his words made the butterflies in her belly get all excited.

"Don't even try and say she's not pretty. Even I've drooled over her."

He chuckled and pulled her close, nuzzling her neck until her nails bit into his arms.

"'Pretty' is perhaps the appropriate word for her. But her inability to meet my eyes, and her fluttery, simpering nature, leaves much to be desired. My tastes are far more refined."

She burst out laughing.

"And here I thought you hated that I call you out on your bullshit and don't let you get away with the intimidating tactics."

"No, Rana, as irritating as you often are-" his words were briefly cut off when her elbow connected with his ribs. "-I'm rather fond of your annoying tendency to bicker over every little thing imaginable."

"Keep it up."

"I intend to…"

His lips captured hers before she could reply, and when she cocked her elbow for another retaliatory strike, he snatched her wrists and pinned them behind her back in one of his hands. Before she could muster the will to protest, he'd lifted her and pressed her back against the wall, her legs wrapping around his waist.

"A fortnight," she groaned, trying to remind them both that they'd agreed to keep this a secret for that time.

"I'll be damned if I have to wait that long to have you again," he hissed as he began pulling and tearing at her clothes.

Lowering her to her feet, she kicked out of her boots and shimmied out of her pants while he tore at his belt before picking her back up and pushing her roughly back against the wall.

It was fast, neither of them able to last for more than a few moments. When she threw her head back, her body tensing as she came, he clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle her cries, before sinking his teeth into her shoulder to muffle his groan as he spent himself deep inside of her.

Her forehead fell against his neck, panting as she rode the aftershocks of her release. For several minutes, they stayed locked like this, savoring the contact.

"Can't sleep like this, little one."

"Can," she murmured drowsily, snuggling closer and yawning loudly.

"Come, you can go to bed and I'll talk to Keldorn," he said, brushing his lips against her hair as he set her on her feet, holding her waist when she swayed.

"Mokay," she yawned again, shuffling to her bed and collapsing into it.

Dragging the blankets over her, he scratched Rook behind the ears when the kitten curled up beside her head.

"Sleep well, little one."

Rana barely got out a 'good night' before she started snoring.

*

Rana gazed up at the Iron Throne headquarters in Baldur's Gate. Beside her on the worn stone streets, a patch of discoloration, discernible only when the light shines just right and you were standing in just the right spot.

She knew it was there, could see it out of the corner of her eye, but her attention was drawn to the more prominent stains that ran down the face of the towering building.

Sarevok's former home looked to be weeping blood. It oozed out of the windows, the bright red seeming to drain the color out of the stone and the greenery around the lawn.

A movement somewhere on the edge of her peripheral finally broke the trance of the sight. Looking around, she frowned at the rats swarming down a side street. Turning to follow their progress, her gaze found that discoloration, and she focused on it, wondering how it had come to be there, but it gave no answers, so she moved on.

Ravens called to one another as she walked the streets of the city, one of the only sounds now heard in what was once a noisy, busy place.

Shop fronts and homes that lined the streets were all bleeding as the Iron Throne was doing. The shattered windows and broken down doors looked like open wounds.

More rats swarmed around her, oblivious to her passing, as they moved from house to house. Tiny scarlet paw prints painted the ground, further leeching the area of color, except for that vivid, mesmerizing red.

The Ducal Palace was in similar shape, except for the corpses spilling from its interior. Bodies draped half-out from windows, with more lying scattered across the steps, and the entrance was choked with them and crawling with yet more rats. Their movements reminded her of maggots, the way the dead seemed to writhe and pulse with their feasting.

The Elfsong Tavern was gone, a heap of rubble all that remained.

The Flaming Fist were nothing more than suits of rusting armor left out in the sun, the bleached skeletons within obviously the first to have died and been devoured.

When Rana reached the harbor, after her circuit of the city, and finding no living people, she saw the smoking husks of a hundred ships clogging the waters.

"Rana? Rana!"

A girl's voice. Imoen's voice.

Rana followed her sister's call, all the way to the temple of Bhaal beneath the city.

As she entered the place that Sarevok had fallen, she found a man sitting atop the throne there on the dais. When he raised his head to look at her, she stopped, and drew no closer.

"Beautiful, isn't it, Rana?"

"What is this about, Cyric? What happened here? Why are all the people of Baldur's Gate dead?"

 _"You_ happened here, my dear. You… and him."

Cyric opened his gloved hand to reveal the broken remains of a small statue. She instantly recognized the features. He opened his other hand to reveal a similar statue, only this one was of her, not of Sarevok, and it was whole.

No… not quite whole. It wasn't in pieces, as his was, but there were cracks marring the surface. A few chips were missing.

"For every choice, a consequence," Cyric murmured, his voice echoing almost melodically throughout the chamber. "For every door you choose to walk through, a thousand others just like it close behind you. Other choices that you discarded, knowingly or not."

Cyric turned the statue of her over in his hand, then flipped it up into the air, sending it spinning end over end, where he caught it as it came back down.

"This dream is one of those doors. One of the ones you closed in favor of another. In this alternate moment in history, a child of Bhaal stole into the bedroom of another child of Bhaal one night. She tried to assassinate him in his sleep, but failed when he woke to stop her blade from piercing the back of his neck. He meant to retaliate, to kill her as he swore he would one day, but he failed, too."

Rana felt as if the room had begun to tilt and spin on its axis.

 _The dream… the one I'd had all those years ago, about trying to kill Sarevok in his sleep. The same one that he had dreamt too… this is what he's talking about. How… how could that have meant anything? We both saw it because we shared a soul already, thanks to Gorion, but it didn't mean anything. Or were we seeing what would actually happen if I'd tried to assassinate him?_

"In that dream," Cyric continued. "He failed to kill you when he kissed you instead. This… would have been the end result of what happened in that bedroom. Your memories would have begun to return, and you both would have found it difficult to kill one another outright. Even though that is what fate demanded. What your father demanded. So, you would have raised your armies, rallied your allies, and laid siege to each other. This city would have been your battleground. And all of its citizens would have died in the crossfire."

"Why show this to me? What does it matter now?"

Cyric tilted his head, and his eyes flicked around the room, prompting her to do the same.

Bodies now littered the gleaming floor.

Tazok, Semaj, Angelo, Cythandria, Tamoko, Winski, and dozens of Flaming Fist.

Ajantis, Viconia, Minsc, Dynaheir, Kagain, Safana, Dorn, Kivan, Jaheira, Khalid, and all of the other companions who had joined with her during her time on the Sword Coast, whether they had still been there at the final battle or not, all lay dead around her.

"Only one survived this battle," Cyric said as he watched her turn a slow circle, looking at each of the faces of the slain.

Imoen sat against one of the pillars, her head in her hands, Rana's bow, broken in half, across her lap.

"Tell me something, Rana," Cyric said, and she stumbled back when he disappeared from his seat and appeared right in front of her. "If I told you that in the days ahead of you, in a battle _not too_ unlike this one, that _you_ would be the only one still standing, would you go back, if you could, and take this door?"

Raising his arms out wide to encompass the whole of the slaughter, Cyric's voice rose, and the voices of the dead around her joined in.

"For every choice, a consequence."

A sound of pain and denial escaped her as Imoen was suddenly among the dead, lying flat on her back, the Sword of Chaos impaling her through the chest. Sitting against the pillar now was herself, looking tired, but a triumphant smile playing across her lips as she took in the carnage before her.

"Would you take the door that led to the end where your sister lived? Or would you take the one where _you_ lived?"

"I thought this was supposed to be a vision of what might have been. Not a vision of what could be."

"Some doors may be closed, but not always are they locked. These may appear once again further down the line, a second chance to right a wrong or perhaps to make the same mistake twice. Fate is fickle like that."

"You're saying I would have died, Sarevok and I both, along with the entire city, if that dream had been reality. Everyone except Imoen."

"Perhaps. It would have depended on what doors you chose after walking through this one. A thousand different possibilities open with each door, a labyrinth of yet more doors. This outcome was possible."

"And there's a door somewhere in my future that may lead to something like this."

"With you as the sole survivor. The sole victor. Your comrades in arms all slain. Does this future appeal to you?"

"Of course not!" She snapped, forboding and horror threatening to strangle the words in her throat. "It's no victory if everyone I love is dead!"

"Intriguing. I've seen how well you handle killing in the name of what you love. And what is right, or at least what _you_ believe to be right. But I have not seen enough to know how you deal with sacrifice. I wonder… if you can manage that with the same grace as you do with loss and vengeance."

"Nothing is worth sacrificing all of them," she hissed, gesturing to the bodies of her companions.

"Nothing, hmm? And what if it weren't all of them? What if you could keep your Deathbringer, and the others, and only sacrifice one?"

"You're referring to Imoen. You should know that that is never going to happen. As I said, _nothing_ is worth the sacrifices you speak of."

"Not even godhood?"

 _"Especially_ godhood."

"Ah, my little fool, you think to lie to a liar? I can see the hesitation, hear the uncertainty, even underneath that righteous indignation. I know you've thought of ascending. And, hey, I don't blame you! I thought of it, too! And then I did it. Do you want to know if I thought it was worth what I sacrificed?"

"I don't give a single fuck if you thought it was worth it."

"Because you know it was worth it. That it _is_ worth it. You may try to bury that knowledge beneath your bleeding love and the scraps of honor you have left to your name, but I see it glinting beneath that rubble."

"Fuck you. Let me out of this."

"You do not command me, my dear. You're lucky I find it cute that you would even try. Tell me something else, why do you worship Mask? His power is all but gone, I saw to that. You cling to shadows, literally and figuratively. Why worship nothing when you could worship me?"

Rana bit her tongue to keep from telling him where he could stick her worship.

"I know where you're going with this. You said in the last dream that the quality of worshipper is important. I'm sure having a half-god as one of your sheep would be a nice boost for your power."

"It's not the power I would enjoy. It's the boost to my ego, having the daughter of my predecessor on her knees in supplication."

"If you're actually trying to get me to worship you, then that was the _wrong_ thing to say."

Chuckling, he patted her on the head and turned away.

"Before I let you go, do me a favor?"

"No. And am I going to have to expect this everytime I go to sleep?"

"You should not be so quick to dismiss a favor for a god, sweetling. And yes, I intend to visit you again. I rather like our little chats."

Tossing her the statue of herself, he began to walk away, and the chamber and the bodies around her began to fade away.

"Look after that," he said over his shoulder. "You've already seen what happens when it breaks. Oh, and since you're not up for favors, how about a simple request? Tell Haer'Dalis I said 'hello', won't you?"

*

 ** _Sarevok_**

"Keldorn informed me last night that he's learned from the priests of Helm in this town that Cyric is in possession of _six_ portfolios. _Six,_ Rana. Deception, Murder, Strife, the Dead, Lies, and Intrigue. Strife, Deception, and Lies are what he's utilizing against you in these dreams. Why else would he tell you that? If Haer'Dalis really followed him, why would he reveal that to you?"

Rana continued to pace, her arms folded, and he could see her nails digging into her skin.

"Think for a moment, little one. He has no reason to help you, but _every_ reason to make you tear your own group apart."

"You said he holds Illusion as well. He claimed Jorval didn't actually worship him, but Jorval was one _hell_ of an illusionist. He disarmed the other clerics, but empowered Jorval. Probably to lull us into a false sense of security. Which worked, by the way. We weren't prepared for Jorval at all. Haer'Dalis is a Doomguard, and all of Cyric's portfolios sound pretty fucking chaotic, so it's not out of the realm of possibility that he'd be drawn to a god like that."

"So, what, you think he told you about Haer'Dalis in hopes that you would confront him, so that the tiefling would tear you apart once he learned he was outed? That he'd be able to take you and I down because he's been strengthened by his god?"

"I don't know what to think!" She snapped, running her fingers through her hair that hung freely down her back. "Maybe you're right, and he's just saying that to make me paranoid. Or maybe you're wrong, and Haer'Dalis is working for him, and maybe instead of confronting him like he wants, I should take care of this while he sleeps."

"And how would Imoen react? When she learns that her sister, who she's had a falling out with, sliced her lover's throat in the middle of the night. You spoke of mending fences, this will not do that!"

"Oh don't act like you care about my relationship with Imoen. I would think more love lost between us would make you happy."

He rose from where he was sitting on his bed and went to her.

"I know that if you don't fix things with her, your rage will grow and the taint will swallow you whole. I don't want that."

"And yet you don't like the idea of keeping us a secret for a little while. As if advertising what's going on between us would do any good either!"

"Do I have to spell it out for you why I don't like it?" He snarled. "I understand, and I agreed to do it, but you ask too much if you expect me not to resent it!"

Being woken in the wee hours of dawn by Rana slipping into his room had resulted in only one thing on his mind. But then she lit a few more of the candles on his dresser and immediately begun to pace while recounting her most recent visit from Cyric.

Her previous dream of the Prince of Lies had been disturbing enough. For some reason, he had assumed the god's hands were tied in this matter. He had to just wait and see how the Prophecy would unfold. Learning that Cyric could not only interfere, even when he'd been commanded not to, but could cut him out completely when he spoke to Rana, was very, very, unsettling. He could defend her body, and he could defend her soul from the Slayer, but he could not defend her mind from a god. Especially one that had portfolios that seemed finely honed for inducing paranoia, doubt, and insanity. And Rana's mind had always been on shaky ground.

"Do you remember," she said quietly, eyes distant in thought. "Right before we left, during the meeting, Haer'Dalis said that he'd heard rumors that Cyric isn't insane anymore. Where the _fuck_ would he hear something like that, Sarevok?"

"The same place the paladin heard them, Rana?" He asked in a patronizing tone, his anger growing right along with her paranoia. "Not to mention he's a _bard,_ part of his job is to listen to rumors!"

"Why are you so quick to defend him?"

That question hit him just as hard as if she'd emphasized it with a knife to his ribs. Not the question itself, exactly, but the suspicion in her voice.

 _I have to find a way to intercept these dreams. He obviously knows what he's doing if after two dreams, she's already like this._

Reigning in his temper, he reached out to pull her close. She stepped away, brushing his hand aside.

"Tell me why, Sarevok!"

"I'm not defending him! If you truly believe he's a spy for Cyric, then I'll kill him myself before the sun finishes rising. Say the word Rana and it's done. Whether or not he's innocent doesn't even concern me. What _does_ concern me is that I'd be doing it because of the paranoia that Cyric planted within you. And that your sister will hate you for it. And you won't be able to handle that!"

"Don't tell me what I can't handle! You think Imoen has never been angry with me before? You think watching a companion die is new to me?! Hells, it's definitely not new to you! Like you haven't ordered someone's death because of a betrayal, imagined or real! You sent Tamoko-"

"Don't you _dare_ bring her up. She has nothing to do with this madness. You're being irrational. Go downstairs, drink some damn coffee, and _think_ about this. Gods, talk to Keldorn. Or your ranger."

"Which one?" She sneered, and turned to leave.

His temper snapped with that remark.

Snatching her around her waist, he hauled her close, her back against his chest. Leaning down until his lips brushed her ear, he tightened his grip on her so that she would know his next words were in earnest.

"I'm going to let that slide this time, Rana, because I know you're distressed. You need to _calm down._ You're playing right into Cyric's hands, and I can't help you if you won't listen to a word I say." He took a moment to gather his thoughts, as the feel of her pressed against him, the smell of her hair, and the way her breath quickened when she felt him hardening against her back had scattered them. "You think I give a damn about Haer'Dalis? About Imoen? About Valygar or Keldorn or any of the others? I'm _yours,_ my _dhaer._ If watching the light leave their eyes would please you, then I will walk out of this room and bring them before you, and cut each of them down until this room runs red with the same torrents of blood that you saw running down the front of the Iron Throne in your dream. I don't fight for them, I don't bleed for their ideals, I don't kill for this realm or its people. I do all of this for you and you alone."

Gently, she tugged at his arm until he released her. She turned around and looked up at him. Her eyes softly glowing like the candlelight around them. Placing a hand on his chest, the one that bore the scars on her palm from that shard of glass she'd used to nearly kill herself, she slid it up until she reached the stubble across his jaw.

"Cyric says I'm not well acquainted with sacrifice. If that's true, I don't want that to change." Her words trailed off for a moment when he wrapped a hand around her lower back, his thumb drifting beneath her shirt to skim across the lowermost X carved into her spine. "We'll keep an eye on Haer'Dalis for now. But the dreams, Sarevok, these visions from the Mad God… I don't wish the others to know just yet. They already whisper. They already doubt. If they learn that Cyric speaks to me in my sleep, their belief in me will only erode further. And I need them to fight for me. I need Imoen."

"As you command," he murmured, letting his arm fall to his side when she took a step back.

He expected her to leave. The sun was nearly up, and the others would be waking or coming in from patrols. But then her hands grasped the bottom of her shirt and tugged it over her head before tossing it to the floor.

"And I need you."


	3. The Gathering Storm

_I'm back from my depression hiatus, and this chapter is pretty all over the place. Introducing a new PoV, a face from Sarevok's past, and a change to Melissan cause she's lame in the game. This chapter starts at the exact moment the last chapter ended._

 **Chapter 3: The Gathering Storm**

 _ **Imoen**_

"And I need you."

Imoen sat beside the door to Sarevok's bedroom, back against the wall, her scratchy gray cloak wrapped around her, ensuring that even if someone walked down the hall, all but tripping over her, they wouldn't notice her.

She wasn't invisible, that's not how the cloak worked. Instead, it made her just a fixture of her surroundings. Just as unimportant as a side table, as dull as a lamp. Something that one accepts as meant to be there, but not worthy of their attention or scrutiny.

It was how she had managed to slip an Inquisitor's wedding ring right off his finger without so much as a glance up at her. Sitting at his desk in his room, humming a hymn to his god while he wrote a letter to his daughters, Keldorn's impressive abilities, meant to reveal the unrevealable, illuminate the invisible, were made null and void against the loophole of the cloak's subtle power.

Behind the door beside her, the sounds of kissing turned to desperate murmurs, then gasps and moans as her sister fucked their brother.

Imoen wanted the anger to come, but it eluded her. She wanted that sense of betrayal to come flaring back to life within her breast, the way it did when Rana stood before them all and told her story of when she was a child. The story she had never shared with Imoen. But that, too, remained just out of reach.

Maybe this was due to the fact that nothing Rana did could surprise her anymore. She didn't know how long she'd been lying to herself. Didn't know how long she held her end of the rope that bound them together, the rope that blinded her to what her sister was slowly becoming. The rope that lended her excuse after excuse for the rot Imoen could see growing behind her sister's eyes. Only when Rana left, with Sarevok at her side, for that temple, leaving Imoen behind like so much else Rana had abandoned over the years, did Imoen finally look down at her hands and see they were raw and bloody from holding onto that damn rope long after Rana had pulled it taught to the point of snapping. Long after it had frayed, and the friction of holding onto something that was pulling away from her, with more strength than she had to hold on, had burned her so deeply that she had become numb to the pain it caused.

When she and Haer'Dalis returned from their walk last night, and she learned of Rana's return, she had to stop herself a hundred times from going to her. From banging down her door and throwing her arms around her. From begging her for forgiveness for her part in their fight. She hated quarreling with her sister. More than anything.

Back in Candlekeep, when Gorion learned, to his exasperation, that the two girls could not be separated, he gave up and began to encourage what was already happening naturally. He taught them the importance of looking after one another. Of watching each other's backs. They'd taken those lessons to heart, and it didn't take long before Gorion and Winthrop began teasing about the devastation the two girls would unleash upon the realms once they were eventually released into the wilds.

That memory would have made her smile if she didn't feel so hollow.

As soon as the sun began to rise, Imoen had quietly extricated herself from a snoozing Haer'Dalis and made her way to Rana's room. Seeing the tangled blankets, but no sign of her sister, she assumed she'd already risen, from a bad dream probably, and began heading for the stairs. She'd stopped though, one foot poised to take the first step down, when a suspicion began to take root. Grabbing her cloak from her room, she'd went to Sarevok's room and pressed her ear to the door.

"You think I give a damn about Haer'Dalis? About Imoen? About Valygar or Keldorn or any of the others? I'm _yours_ , my _dhaer_. If watching the light leave their eyes would please you, then I will walk out of this room and bring them before you, and cut each of them down until this room runs red with the same torrents of blood that you saw running down the front of the Iron Throne in your dream. I don't fight for them, I don't bleed for their ideals, I don't kill for this realm or its people. I do all of this for you and you alone."

Her disgust at hearing those words spoken had been so great that she'd missed Rana's reply. For which she was thankful, as only moments after Sarevok had uttered that declaration, the sounds coming from the room suggested that Rana wasn't too upset with his offer to kill them all.

Rising to her feet, nauseous from what she was hearing on the other side of the door, Imoen returned to Rana's empty room and began to rummage through her things.

She couldn't trust a single word that came out of her sister's mouth, so she was going to see for herself if she was hiding anything else. As she dug through dresser drawers and thumbed through her journals, which she couldn't read because they'd been written in Elvish, her blood finally began to boil.

Imoen knew that Sarevok wanted Rana to ascend and why. And she knew that Rana was also aware. The fact that the pair was currently in bed together meant that Rana either planned to go along with his plans, or he had abandoned them. There were other possibilities certainly, Imoen didn't doubt that she could be lying about wanting to ascend, but sex wasn't something Rana used deceptions to get. And she knew Sarevok, just because her sister had chosen to forget who he was, didn't mean Imoen had. If there was power to be gained, Sarevok wouldn't give up the hunt.

She wanted to believe that he'd capitalized on Rana's loneliness and seduced her. She wanted to believe that her sister was the victim here, an unwitting pawn in their brother's schemes. But that was the rope talking, she was sure of it. And no matter how many winding paths her mind ventured down, trying to figure out _why_ this was all happening, in the end the answer didn't matter. What mattered was that Rana had lied. Repeatedly. What mattered was that Rana was in bed with the man who butchered Gorion and the people they had loved in Candlekeep. The man who scarred her. The man who once haunted their nightmares while they stumbled along the Sword Coast, searching for answers while dodging assassins.

Imoen could forgive a lot. _Had_ forgiven a lot.

But she couldn't forgive this.

She couldn't blame the taint. Or Bhaal. Or Irenicus. This was all Rana. And Sarevok, too, but in some ways she couldn't blame him. When the wolf steals a sheep the shepherd may rail at the beast, but what he's really angry at is the wolf's nature, not the wolf itself. It can't help what it does. What its instincts tell it to do. Sarevok was acting as he'd always done. This didn't surprise her, and while the consequences enraged her, the shepherd who yelled and cried over what the wolf had done was wasting time and leaving the rest of his flock open to attack.

You don't tell the wolf how betrayed you feel.

 _You put it down._

The memory of her and Rana soaking in the hot springs together swam into her mind. She gave her the chance to fess up to everything and instead Rana fed her some more lies. That was the first time she'd begun to suspect it. She had gobbled them up, just as she always had, only this time she noticed the words tasted bitter and wrong.

And if it had taken that long to finally begin peeking beneath the blindfold she held to her own face, how many other times had she gorged herself on Rana's falseness?

Tears blurred her vision, and she angrily swiped at her eyes before yanking open one of the dresser drawers. It took her a moment to quiet her mind before she could grasp what lay within.

Rows of tiny, carefully labelled bottles, the writing so small on each that she had to squint to make it out, even holding it practically to her nose.

 _Essence of Ether… Malice… Midnight Tears… Pale Tincture… Viper Venom… Wyvern Poison…_

Why would Rana have all of these? They'd regularly poisoned their weapons in the past, with things like the Wyvern Poison, but the rest she'd never seen outside of a shop or witch's den. And she knew some of these, like Midnight Tears, were useless unless ingested.

Feeling around the corners of the drawer, she pressed against a small groove in the wood and heard something click. A secret compartment. Inside, two thin and very worn journals lay. These were written in common, and not in Rana's hand. One detailed the uses of the poisons, with notes in the margin that she recognized as her sister's handwriting, small notations made about variations in dosages according to race or gender.

The second book was a diary, and looked to be very old. The name of the author was unknown to her, but he was a self-professed priest of Mask. Skimming through the contents, the man detailed the unorthodox ways of worshipping the God of Shadows. From stealing gold from churches of both good and evil, to dedicating an assassination in His name. How to call upon His favor in hiding one's movements and muffling sounds.

 _So… Rana worships Mask now. I wonder how Mielikki feels about this._

That thought gave her pause. Rana hadn't used the minor druid spells that she'd learned since becoming a ranger. In a long time. Maybe she couldn't anymore? And was this before or after she started following Mask?

She briefly wondered if Sarevok had anything to do with this, but dismissed that thought outright. He'd never shown himself to be the kind of man who bothered with gods, outside of becoming one himself, of course. And, looking back, Rana's gradual shift from upstanding ranger to morally gray thief began happening long before Sarevok's return.

The door opened and Rana walked in. Imoen still wore her cloak, but she froze when her sister entered the room and swept past her to begin filling her bathtub with water.

A dozen different ways to open this conversation flashed through her mind, and her heart raced because she wasn't ready for this. She had thought she was, but Rana's sudden appearance threw her for a moment.

She didn't know what outcome she wanted. A large part of her yearned for her sister to apologize. To admit to everything without Imoen forcing the truth from her. To have her ask for her help in getting Sarevok out of their lives for good. It was a fool's hope. A girl's hope. She knew that, but that's what she wanted deep down.

The other part of her, in the darkened corner of her heart that she fought to keep silent, wanted Rana to react exactly as she predicted she would. She wanted the inevitable fight. She wanted the yelling, wanted those brutal, slicing words that she knew Rana could hurl at her when backed into a corner. She wanted that pain. If only so it could begin to scar already. So that she wouldn't be hurt by her sister any longer.

The anguish and the hesitation burned away when Rana walked by her again and Imoen got a better look at her. Rising up on her toes to reach a towel draped over the mirror hanging above her dresser, the one that no longer held any glass, Rana's shirt rose for just an instant, revealing fresh bruises on her hips. A few dotted the area just around part of the twining scar Sarevok had given her. Disgust and rage filled the void left by the incinerated softer emotions she had been struggling with.

"How much of it all was an act, sis?"

Rana started violently as Imoen dropped her cloak to the floor, one of the knives that had been laying on the dresser now held in her hand as she spun to stare wide eyed at her.

 _"Fucking Hells, Imoen!"_ Rana exclaimed, lowering her weapon. "How did you-"

Her words died in her throat as she saw the gray cloak, and Imoen watched with sick satisfaction as realization dawned in those once familiar amber eyes. When Rana fully looked at her, Imoen saw a stranger now, as a cold, calculating mask had dropped into place.

 _Funny. I never realized how much of Sarevok was in that look. Gods, how much have I turned a blind eye to all these years? How much damage have I let her wreak because I clung to something that died a long time ago? This isn't Rana. It's her corpse. Animated, but empty._

"Answer me."

"What was the question?"

"When did my sister cease to be the woman Gorion raised and become a smaller, and somehow more deceitful, version of Sarevok?"

"Gods you need to break up with that bard already. You've gotten so dramatic."

 _"Dramatic?_ Tell me something, back at the hot springs, when you swore there was nothing between you and Sarevok, were you already thinking about what he'd be like in bed? And, when you decided to leave for that temple, and brought only him along, how much of that was because you just wanted to be alone together?"

"No, I hadn't given any thought to him as a lover. Not actively anyway. And yes, being away from prying eyes and judgmental, hypocritical companions had definitely factored into that decision."

Rana's callously honest reply wasn't what she had expected. Imoen's heart raced faster. Her sister wasn't even trying to deny any of this, or blunt her words.

"What happened to you?" She whispered, unable to keep the hurt out of her voice. "Rana… _why?"_

"'What happened to me?' Seriously? You've been sneaking around, spying on me, and snuck in here to ambush me with your questions, and you suddenly realize I may not react well to that?"

"I wouldn't have had to sneak around if you could just be honest with me! You said you weren't planning on sleeping with our brother! After you reassured me multiple times that there was nothing there between you two! Where were you before you came in here, Rana? Huh? Or you gonna try and lie some more?!"

"No more lies, Imoen. If you want the truth that badly, and are willing to eavesdrop and dig around in my room to get it, then I won't make you degrade yourself even further. I was with Sarevok. Would you like details?"

 _"Degrade myself?!_ You just owned up to sleeping with Sarevok and you wanna talk about degradation?! Wow, you are a piece of work."

"Feel better now? Has the truth set you free? Or is that only supposed to happen for the one confessing the truth? I don't feel much of anything, though. A little tired and sore, maybe. Definitely not free. In case you've forgotten, we have bigger things to worry about than who I sleep with."

Imoen clenched her fists, and she had to stamp down the rage induced surge of magic rising within her. Rana still held that knife. Once, she would have never given that a single consideration.

"No, Rana, I haven't forgotten anything. So, these 'bigger things to worry about', are you talking about ascension? Has Sarevok finally convinced you to become a goddess so he can leech off your power?"

"Becoming a goddess has never been my end goal, you know that. I may have briefly flirted with the idea, but no. And Sarevok has put aside that desire. At least for the time being. I don't expect I've heard the last of it, but I'll burn that bridge when I come to it."

"He really has completely hoodwinked you, hasn't he? Gods you were always so bad at picking men. I wonder how you plan on breaking up the inevitable fight between Bad Choice Number One, Kivan, and Even Worse Choice Number Two, Sarevok."

She watched as Rana's expression hardened, and the grip she held on her dagger tightened briefly.

"Why did you write to him, Imoen? And _when?"_

"I sent him a letter the morning after you came back from the hot springs. You were in bad shape, we needed the help, and I knew your pride would keep you from reaching out to him. I also noticed the way you and Sarevok were looking at each other the night y'all showed up at the inn. When I hugged you, overcome with relief and happiness that my sister hadn't died, you reeked of him. I'm human, and I was tipsy, and I could still smell him on you."

"So you were hoping I'd forget about him and want to try and reconnect with Kivan, is that it? You of all people should know that the way it ended between us meant there would be no second chances."

"And you of all people know exactly what Sarevok did to you and why sitting back and just wringing my hands over the possibility of you playing mouse to his cat is a terrible and potentially catastrophically bad idea, Rana!"

"I'm fast approaching my threshold of tolerance for this bullshit, Imoen. You're going to just have to get over it. We both know you'll whine, make passive aggressive remarks, and sulk until you get distracted and forget all about why you were even upset in the first place. In the meantime, we have work to do. Or do you plan on drawing this out?"

"And if I do? What're you gonna do about it? What if I decide to tell the others? You won't be able to just sweep this under the rug then, huh? No, they'll force you to choose. Either Sarevok goes, or they do. Not all of them, I know you have Valygar wrapped so tightly around your finger that you could probably have Lavok resurrected and crowned as king of Amn or something and he'd still stay stuck to your side. And Keldorn probably thinks that taking Sarevok as your paramore will aid in his rehabilitation into the 'not-quite-so-evil-anymore' club. Viconia likely thinks this whole thing is hilarious, if she cares enough to have an opinion at all. But the others? Whatcha gonna do if they get even half as outraged as I am and rightfully leave your ass?"

"Don't concern yourself with what I'll do, little sister. I have contingency plans. And if blackmail is the route you wanna take here, let me remind you that Jaheira would probably find it very interesting to know who cut her husband to ribbons."

Imoen felt as if Rana had just sunk that dagger into her belly and twisted it. Of all the things that haunted her, Khalid's death was one that hung the heaviest. Which Rana well knew.

"Wow… you're really going to go there aren't you?" She whispered, not even trying to disguise the pain.

"If you force my hand, then yes. _Back off._ You have every right to be unhappy about this, but you _do not_ have the right to try and drive a bigger wedge into the middle of this group. You can hate me, you can go rant to Haer'Dalis, but at the end of the day, Imoen, if you care about ending this war, and having your life back, you'll keep your _fucking mouth shut."_

Rana slammed the dagger, to its hilt, into her dresser, her eyes glowing with repressed fury. All of the righteous indignation burning inside of Imoen sputtered out beneath the crashing wave of her sister's words. The thought of Jaheira finding out about what she'd done make her sick. The thought of going about her business, knowing what was going on underneath the looks between Rana and Sarevok, and what they were doing when the other's slept, was almost as bad. Almost.

"We're done here," Rana hissed, and moved past her, heading for the bathroom.

Her shoulder brushed Imoen's, and a current of what she could only call electricity seemed to jump between them, stinging and immediately amplifying the need to discharge her magic. As if she was so full of arcane power that some of it needed to be released before she went supernova.

A sudden thought, blinding in its appearance and intensity, of releasing her anger in whatever form the magic chose to take, had her raising her hands before she'd realized what she was doing.

 _Do it. Release the rage. Let the magic flow. END HER._

Imoen didn't know whose voice it was shouting inside her mind. It could have been her own, or Bhaal's, or another's. The words to a spell bubbled up into her throat, and she had to clamp her teeth together to prevent them from escaping. It was just like at the hot springs, with the Earthquake spell, and during the drow raid, with the Meteor Swarm. Like a dozen other times she felt this need to unleash the raw energy crackling through her veins. And like those other times, she rode it out, fighting for all she was worth, until it subsided.

She wouldn't harm her sister.

Clenching her fists and gritting her teeth at the uncomfortable feeling of being gorged with too much power, she lowered her hands. She wanted to hurt Rana. The taint wanted her to hurt Rana. But she would not give in this time. If she struck out with what was coursing through her right now, she could kill her. And she wouldn't let Rana haunt her even worse than she was doing now. She wouldn't let her goad her into becoming more like her.

"At least tell me what it was like," she whispered, jaw clenched with the strain of holding back, but needing an answer. "I wanna know what it was like to fuck the man who killed the only family we'd ever known. What it was like to be touched with the hands that slaughtered so many people. That nearly broke you. What was it like, Rana, to give yourself to our brother? To let him take his pleasure on you after everything he's done to us? _What was it like?!"_

Rana paused in the doorway and half-turned to look back at her. The anger and the haughtiness bled away in her pale face as her eyes dimmed and grew distant, as if searching for the answer. After a moment, she met Imoen's gaze and let the rest of her mask slip away, briefly revealing the real Rana and the emotions she'd tried to hide.

"Honestly? It felt like coming home."

 _ **Sarevok**_

"Hey, Sarevok, where's your better half? I need a word with her."

Sarevok turned and glowered at Valygar as the man joined him at the front door. If their relationship was going to stay a secret for now, then the ranger definitely wasn't helping.

"What?" Valygar asked before he could reply. "You share a soul and she's a better person than you."

He shook his head at the man's attempt to justify his words, but let it go.

"In her room, bathing I believe."

"Hmm guess I'll wait then. The mayor sent a servant down here this morning, requesting an audience with her first thing tomorrow."

"Does this mayor have a name?"

"I'm sure he does, but the servant took pains not to let it slip. I've already asked around, after we first arrived here, but all anyone will say is that he's a dwarf."

Surely not the same dwarf they'd liberated from Tor Albtraum? He'd said he'd been sent by the mayor. Had he been lying?

"I suppose we'll find out. I'm going into town to repair my armor. I haven't had the time to fix the damage Imoen did to it the night of the drow raid, and it's suffered some more wear and tear recently, too."

"I'll come with you. I need to get out of this house. The sexual tension between Kivan and Aerie is nearly as bad as it is between you and Rana. Well, that's not true. Aerie seems oblivious to his interest in her, which I'll admit is fun to watch, but I've seen enough pathetic pining from Anomen that I don't need to watch it from Kivan, too."

Sarevok didn't reply to that as he headed out the door. He had bigger things to worry about at the moment. And as long as that elf wasn't pining for Rana, he couldn't care less who his cock pointed at.

This little excursion served a second purpose, one he didn't mention to Valygar, as he didn't want this getting back to Rana before he decided to tell her what he discovered. The armory lay on the opposite end of the town from the Rookery. About a mile away. After he dropped off his armor, he intended to continue moving away from her. He wanted to see if Keldorn's theory about them not being able to wander too far away from each other was true.

He did not allow himself to wonder how he'd feel when he got his answer.

"So, can I ask how the trip to your old home went?"

"No."

Valygar chuckled and let out a dramatic sigh.

"I should have expected that. Guess I'll just pester Rana about it."

"She'll likely have even less desire to tell you than I do."

"Even though I'm the one who found the place. And I keep your secrets. I see how it is. Poor old Valygar, taken for granted and mistreated by his dearest friends."

Sarevok opened his mouth to sneer that they weren't friends, but, to his surprise, the words stuck in his throat. Irritated by this, he forced the words out, more out of sheer stubbornness now, and they came out gruffly and with far less bite than he would have liked.

"We aren't friends."

"Sure we are! We both share a common goal, we both wield weapons rather than sorcery, and we both adore our fearless leader."

"That makes us allies, not friends."

"Sarevok, you've threatened to kill me a number of times now, and never even come close to following up on it. In Sarevok-speak, that translates to mean that you're incredibly fond of me."

"Now I understand why you and Rana are so close. You've fed off each other's out-of-control imaginations to the point that you're delusional."

"And it's endearing right?"

"I think you meant to say 'annoying'."

"Hah! Well, it can't be _that_ annoying, seeing as how you're a thing now. Which means you must also find my being annoying as tolerable. If not outright adorable."

Sarevok sighed and cast the man an irritated look, which only made his shit-eating grin widen.

"What is it you're after, ranger?"

"Oh, nothing. I've just decided that I want to hear you admit to the fact that we're friends. Because of how uncomfortable this is obviously making you."

Valygar was Rana in male form. At least in regards to her personality.

 _Gods help me._

"If you were under attack, I would seriously consider coming to your aid, if it did not put myself at too much undue risk. That's all you'll get out of me."

"Love you too, man."

Sarevok ground his teeth, but before he could formulate anything to wipe that smirk off the ranger's face, his attention was immediately drawn by a man approaching them from the direction of the Sawtooth Inn.

He was big, nearly as tall as he was, and bulkier. Flame red hair done in elaborate braids brushed the backs of his thighs as he walked, and gave him away as having barbarian origins.

They locked eyes from across the cobblestone street that separated them, and the barbarian's icy blue gaze narrowed, his brow furrowed in confusion, as if Sarevok should be familiar to him.

Their stare broke only when the man walked past them. Glancing back over his shoulder, Sarevok watched him head in the direction of the Rookery. Perhaps it was merely coincidence, as the house was on the outskirts of town, and he could simply be leaving, but knowing what the man was, he would take no chances.

"Big bastard," Valygar mumbled, looking back as well, and reluctantly relaxing his hand away from his katana.

"He's a Bhaalspawn."

Valygar jerked to a stop. Sarevok stopped as well and noted the way all of the ranger's teasing, playful behavior melted away as training and loyalty shifted to the fore. It was like watching a completely different man appear before him. He supposed Rana had that effect.

"I'll tail him. Are you going to alert Rana?"

He was already doing so.

Making the reach with his soul, he brushed against her, just lightly enough to get her attention. He felt her temper first, and her effort to tamp it down as she reached back. Whatever she was mad about would have to wait.

He showed her an image of the Barbarian and that he was heading in her direction.

 _Valygar is going to shadow him and I'll follow at a distance to make sure there are no others with him. Inform the rest and have them ready if he shows up._

He missed Rana's reply as the man turned off another street, heading in a different direction.

"Stay on him," he told Valygar. "Seeing me may have spooked him enough to go to ground for a time, but if he's sensed or heard of Rana, I don't want him unsupervised until he can be dealt with."

"But you're not a Bhaalspawn anymore, why would you have spooked him? No offense."

"He's stronger than the riff raff we encountered back in Saradush. Not like Rana or Yaga-Shura, but still powerful. He sensed something in me, I could see it in his eyes. Perhaps it's the shadow of Rana's tainted soul."

"I guess that makes sense. And it's not like you guys track each other down for a reunion over tea. Tell Rana to stay alert, I'll keep an eye on him. Are you still going to go see the blacksmith?"

"Yes," he paused as Rana relayed a message for Valygar. "Kivan will be joining you."

"Yay. All right, see you back at the house later."

He watched the ranger leave, and sighed in resignation before calling after him. Rana wished for him to tell Valygar one last thing.

"Watch your back!"

"Will do, you old softie!"

*

"Damn, this bhaalspawn business sure is bringing you big brawny types out in spades. You another mercenary, huh?"

The blacksmith was barely through with puberty and only just beginning to build the kind of muscle that comes with working steel.

"Did another man my size come through here recently?" He asked the kid, ignoring his question.

"Aye, earlier today. Red hair, carried two battle-axes, but I didn't recognize their style."

"Where's the master blacksmith?"

"Yer lookin' at him. Milord got killed by them drow when they raided the town. I was his apprentice, and what with all you mercenaries coming through here, I wasn't about to let the forge fires die out and lose out on all your coin. Er… I mean your business."

"I see," Sarevok sighed, annoyed at the thought of handing his plate over to this child, but having little choice. "How long till you can finish repairing this?"

The gawky kid took the armor from him and looked over it with a keen sweep of his brown eyes, showing a bit more intelligence than Sarevok previously assumed he possessed.

"As I'm sure you know, I'm pretty backed up right now. Could take a week or two to get to this."

He figured as much.

Tossing a bag of coins onto a side table, he watched him rifle through it, glancing up at him with an eager, impressed look as he gauged the small fortune that had just been slapped down before him.

"How's tomorrow evening?"

"Fine. Now, tell me about the red haired man."

"Not much to say. He didn't need nothing forged or fixed, just asked some questions."

"What sorts of questions?"

The blacksmith finally seemed to grasp that Sarevok's generous bribe was for more than just jumping up to the front of his work list. Shifting uneasily from foot to foot, he glanced back down at the gold, lightly tweaking the cloth pouch, as if seeking reassurance from its contents.

"Well, he's looking for his girlfriend. I remembered her, tall and gorgeous, but I didn't say that of course, I like me head where it's at. She came by here a week or so ago, wanting a sword worked on I think. She was a right bitch about it, but my master got to deal with her, I just sat back and enjoyed the view. She's missing. Guards had come by not long after that, just before the raid, asking questions. I ain't seen here since that day. He's trying to find her."

"I see. I'll be back tomorrow evening. I expect it to be ready," he said, nodding at his armor before fixing the boy with a cold stare.

"Of course, milord! I'll have it ready!"

Swearing under his breath as he left, Sarevok looked out toward the rolling hills and forest that lay before him, trying to decide if it was wise to leave town, however briefly, now that he knew why the Barbarian was here.

 _Rana…_ he called to her. _That bhaalspawn female you killed was the Barbarian's mate._

 _Huh?_

 _That woman you tracked down and killed just before you tried to take on those mercenaries to get that damned bow. He's looking for her._

 _I can barely hear you, where are you?_

He paused, noting that her voice in his head sounded muted as well. He had all but given up on his little distance experiment today, not wanting to be too far away in case that barbarian caused trouble, but now he needed to know.

 _I'll be back soon. Stay inside with the others,_ he commanded, practically shouting at her to get it across.

 _What are you doing? Why do you sound so far away?_

He didn't reply as he headed out of town. The sooner he found his answer, the sooner he could return, and he was set on finding out what would happen as the distance grew between them.

As the bustle of Tor Niedrig faded at his back, and the sounds of insects and bird calls took over, he mulled over what he had learned, and deduced, about the Barbarian. He wondered if the man had told the blacksmith the truth, that the woman had been his girlfriend. If it _were_ true, it would mean he and Rana weren't the only bhaalspawn to pair up.

It made sense. They all shared something that others couldn't possibly understand. Likely, many weren't aware of the possibility of ascending to their father's throne, and merely sought out another like them to avoid the judgements and fear that went hand-in-hand with being a bhaalspawn. Or, they had known each other before ever finding out who their father was, and that knowledge was too little too late.

In a way, that's how it had been for him and Rana. When they were children, they'd often overheard their father being spoken of. Father singular. But the constant threats of abuse and starvation meant they never really cared enough about what the clergy, or Jorval, had said regarding anything other than food. They knew they were related, but it wasn't something that mattered in any way. He had cared about her, but because he was a child, he never paused to consider the way in which he cared or why.

He never could explain why she was the one he chose to protect. Why he had been drawn to her from the very beginning.

Not until she brought him back from the dead, that is. Not until he spent months travelling with her, fighting beside her, seeing the sides of her that he never could have glimpsed back at Baldur's Gate. To see the inner workings of his former rival. The way she interacted with her companions, her sense of humor, those fleeting moments of vulnerability that forced him to recognize that she was a woman and not just a bhaalspawn.

There was a subtle kind of magnetism to her. He wasn't the only one who felt an unexplainable drive to protect her. Before he'd even realized that hating her was something he suddenly had to work at, he had begun to covet her.

The Barbarian was out to avenge his mate. Which meant he couldn't be allowed to live.

Reaching the treeline, he reached for Rana.

And felt nothing.

He was alone. No trace of her in his head, no gentle tug on his soul to indicate what direction he should go to find her. No fleeting blurs of her thoughts and moods.

There were no side effects. He felt no drain on his strength, no siphoning of his life force, or anything of the sort to indicate that the distance between them had any effect other than no longer feeling the other.

After a moment, he found himself breathing a sigh of… relief? He hadn't given this much thought prior to today, mainly because he was too distracted for the full weight of the implications of not being able to leave her to hit him. Now, though, knowing he could walk away and suffer nothing for it, he felt more in control again.

He had no desire to leave her side just yet, but knowing hecouldeased some of the fear, along with the knot of anger that had slowly been tightening around him these past few weeks. He and Rana were so intimately bound that this knowledge returned some of his autonomy. She wasn't his master, and the shackles he had willingly donned could be removed whenever he wanted.

He hadn't realized how much resentment had been building since his return. She'd given part of her soul to resurrect him. He owed her more than he could possibly repay, but he wasn't permanently bound to spending the rest of his days carrying out her will.

"Sarevok…"

A voice behind him had him spinning around, drawing his sword from across his back before completing the turn, even as his mind rebelled at the familiar timbre of his name spoken from a man who was long dead.

Standing several yards away, one hand half raised as if he'd been reaching for him, stood Winski Perorate.

Disheveled black robes hung from the old man's almost cadaverous frame, sweat stained and dusty from travelling. His eyes, dark blue against yellowed white, were reddened with emotion.

"How…?" Sarevok breathed in disbelief, too stunned to finish the question.

"How am I alive? Excellent question. I would love to answer, but I'm a bit winded from trying to catch up to you. After all these years. And just now. I see you've still yet to master the art of 'trudging'. Or 'strolling'."

Winski put his hands on his knees and took a few deep breaths, sweat dripping from his brow as he leaned down, trying to catch his breath.

"Answer me, Winski," Sarevok said after a moment, adjusting his grip on his sword as he kept it partially raised, still reeling from this encounter.

"Young one, I was old when I first saw you, and time marches on, as they say, so I'm even older now, unlike you. And some of us have old injuries to further slow us down."

"Do you mean to tell me that you survived and followed me all the way here to demand an apology for striking you down? Or perhaps to make me feel remorse? You of all people should know better."

"Indeed," he replied with a sad smile. "But no, that's not why I'm here. Though, an apology would be nice."

Clutching his side, Winski weakly straightened up, his eyes roaming over Sarevok before coming to land on his raised sword.

"I always knew how I would end, you know. I accepted my fate just as I fought against your own. I know you don't care, but I hold no anger over what happened. I was ready to die for you, to be immortalized as the man who ushered the new Lord of Murder unto his throne. Just as I was prepared to die by your hand when all of that came crashing down around us. I would do it again, you know. All of it. Even disobeying you and whisking you away from the Ducal palace if I thought I could buy you some more time before facing Ilyrana. You were, and always will be, my greatest pride. And my greatest folly."

"Keep your sentimental drivel," Sarevok replied gruffly, forcing the words out even as they threatened to stick in his throat. "How did you survive and why are you here now?"

"I was healed. After speaking to Ilyrana, she and her companions left me to die, though I had thought she would live up to her reputation and put an old dog out of his misery. A few moments later, a former associate, whom I will get to in a moment, appeared and patched me up. Helped me get out of Baldur's Gate with my head still intact. There is much to say, and I'd rather be sitting down for the length of it. Can we return to town? It's hot."

"It's autumn and it's cold, not even a brisk walk should reduce you to this."

"Do I need to repeat myself about being old? I see you're still bad at listening. I'd thump you over the head like I used to do, but you're standing too far away and I'd like to not go through your sword again. Please, Sarevok, if not for any affection you once felt for me, or for the guidance and training I provided you, then for your sister's sake."

"What does this have to do with her? Tell me now and if I'm satisfied with your answer we can return to town, if not I'll run you through and make sure you can't come back this time. Play me false, old man, and I'll make sure you suffer just long enough to explain yourself anyway."

"I did my job too well with you. Fine, I'll give you a taste of the information I have to impart," Winski sighed, absently massaging the area where Sarevok had struck him years ago. "The woman that led all those bhaalspawn to Saradush, under the pretense of offering them refuge, Melissan she calls herself? Well, she's a Deathstalker turned rogue and she's trying to maneuver Ilyrana into killing the remainder of the Five and preferably dying in the process. Oh, and she's the one who pointed Irenicus in your direction, and ultimately Ilyrana's as well. Interested, yet?"

 _ **Rana**_

"I added some Fire Flower extract to this batch, since you said you didn't like the cold feeling from peppermint oil."

Rana could only groan in reply as Aerie kneaded the knots out her back, working her newest salve into her skin, the heat making her eyelids drop closed.

"Nice, isn't it? When Minsc has gotten himself over-excited about something, a few drops of this stuff applied to his shoulders and he's out like a light."

"How's that going, by the way? Did you two ever go to Rasheman?"

"We did! Oh, Rana, it was wonderful, I wish you could have been with us. I've been trying to convince Uncle Quayle to come along the next time we go back there, but I'm afraid he's grown rather fond of Athkatla, I can't seem to uproot him."

"Mmmm…" Rana mumbled, sinking further into her bed as the avariel continued her ministrations.

"So, do you wanna tell me why that wild elf gets your hackles up?"

Pressing her face into her pillow to hide her knowing smirk, Rana waited a moment to get her voice under control so she wouldn't tip her friend off to how obvious her curiosity was.

"We briefly dated once."

"Oh. I see. It must be awkward then, having him here. Or do you think you might give it another shot?"

"Hells no," Rana snorted before she could catch herself. "We're just not compatible. He's… a great guy, in a rugged, broody, antisocial kind of way. I noticed he seemed pretty smitten by you."

"Me?! Hah, you always were a joker."

"I'm being serious. You're beautiful, sweet, and pure, and all that other wonderful stuff that sounds cheesy when you try to put it into words. You should go out with him."

"Why? Wouldn't it… wouldn't it be weird? Since he was yours first?"

"He was never mine, Aerie. He was still mourning his wife when I came along. Bad timing definitely had something to do with us not working out. Now, I'm far from interested, and so is he. You should give it a shot."

Aerie went quiet, still massaging her lower back, her long blonde hair tickling her ribs as she leaned over her.

"Is that how Haer'Dalis and Imoen got together? You playing matchmaker?" The avariel asked after a while.

"I encouraged it, but even that was kind of unnecessary. Just between you and me, though, it won't last."

"Why do you say that?"

Rana considered how much to share with Aerie. Having once been on the receiving end of Haer'Dalis's attentions, the young woman could provide Rana with insight into what all could be going on in the Bard's head. On the other hand, she didn't want to voice her Cyric-induced suspicions just yet. Not until she had more to go on.

"Well, has he ever struck you as the type that would cleave to just one woman?"

"No… not exactly. His flirtiness is definitely one of the factors that led to me breaking things off with him before it got serious. But… just because a man _hasn't_ settled down yet, doesn't mean he _can't._ Sometimes the right person comes along and brings out something inside you that was never there before."

"Speaking from experience?"

"Of course not. But I see no reason he can't change. They're… cute together."

"Jealous?"

"No, I'm not. I care for our dear sparrow, but he's a bit too much for me. Imoen suits him."

"For now," Rana mumbled, deciding to let this topic drop.

"How can you be such a romantic, always maneuvering people you think might be compatible, but also be such a cynic?" Aerie huffed, bending over Rana's back to study her face.

"Because I'm still a girl at heart, and I'm also a realist. Couples don't stay together. Something always tears people apart. Yet every single one of us thinks we'll somehow be the exception to the rule. We allow ourselves to be drawn to the promise of love despite knowing we'll get swallowed by the flame."

"That's not true. Some couples make it."

"Oh yeah? Name five."

Aerie laughed and got up to rinse the salve from her hands.

"Keldorn and Maria," she said over her shoulder.

"Maria had an affair because Keldorn was rarely home. Where is he now? That's right, far from home. I want every happiness for him, but the odds are stacked against him, just like the rest of us."

"Well, if Khalid were still alive, he and Jaheira would still be together."

"But he's not alive. Death counts, too, you know. In fact, the pain of losing a partner unexpectedly is way worse than just breaking up. Yet another reason why falling in love is such a bad idea."

"You make it sound like you can choose when love happens. Or who with. Love is a force of nature. You can't control where lightning will strike. Nor can you predict the moods of the wind or the fury of the sea. It happens, sometimes when we least expect it, and sometimes when we're fighting our hardest to prevent it. That's the beauty of it."

"Druids can summon lightning to strike where they command. Mages can bend the will of the wind in the form of elementals and they can also harness the power of water."

"And yet lightning still strikes without druids calling it down. The wind still blows even when wizards aren't casting spells. And the tide still ebbs and flows without the orders of any man or woman."

Rana huffed and sat up, donning her shirt and rolling her shoulder, briefly distracted by how languid she felt.

"So," Aerie continued, a small smile across her lips and mirrored in her almond-shaped eyes. "Who is it you're fighting so hard not to love?"

 _ **Sarevok**_

Without knocking, Sarevok opened the door to Rana's room and froze when he saw her and the avariel jump at his sudden appearance.

They were both elven, both had hearing that could detect his footfalls the moment he crossed the threshold of the front door. They should not have been caught unawares.

 _Especially_ when there was a bhaalspawn lurking around the town.

"Um… what's up?" Rana asked.

"I need a word. Alone."

Aerie tilted her head at him, studying him with childlike curiosity. It was the first time she'd met his eyes. After he raised an eyebrow at her scrutiny, she seemed to realize what she was doing and dropped her gaze before flitting around the room, gathering up personal effects.

"Let me know when the tingly feeling goes away, okay? I'm still experimenting with the potency of the Fire Flower."

"When _should_ it go away?" Rana asked her. "Please say never."

"About an hour. The salve is meant to soothe the muscles, especially overused and damaged ones, as well as promote sleep. Any longer than that and you'll grow accustomed to the feel of it and it won't really work anymore as a sleep aid."

Aerie left the room, cringing away from as she passed by. Locking the door behind him, he turned back to Rana and saw the shift as it happened. Where once was a sleepy, relaxed woman, now sat a terrifyingly angry one, her posture rigid in her fury.

"You just had to know, didn't you?" She hissed, rising from her bed and walking to her dresser, and the half-empty bottle of wine atop it. "Does it frighten you so much? The idea of being stuck with me?"

"What did you feel?"

 _"Nothing!_ I felt _nothing._ Were you concerned at all that you suddenly couldn't sense me anymore? Did you spare a single thought to the bhaalspawn you had warned me of just an hour before leaving? Did it cross your mind that I could have been fighting for my life while we were cut off from each other?"

"Valygar and Kivan are currently tailing him, and you have most of your companions here in the house with you. I was out of range for less than an hour, Rana. I know how capable you are, so I did not think you required my constant protection, but perhaps I was wrong."

"I don't need your protection!" She snapped, rounding on him after taking a generous swallow of wine. "Damnit, it's not my fault that I've come to rely so much on having backup inside my head, okay?! You were the one who insisted on taking half my soul, I'm sorry I got used to having a buffer between me and everything lurking around up here!"

He had anticipated some kind of reaction upon his return. Once he and Winksi had begun walking back to town, and he gradually began to feel her once more, he had reached for her. And been shut out behind a wall of rage just seconds after he felt her relief. And hurt.

What he hadn't considered was the role he inadvertently played in keeping the darkness at bay. And that by removing himself from her, he not only left her with one less protector, he left her with one less internal shield against the madness roiling inside her mind.

"Did Cyric, Bhaal, or the Slayer, or anything else try anything?"

She turned away, the bottle dangling from her fingers as she crossed her arms across her stomach.

"No, but…" she trailed off, taking another drink. "Forget about it. We can separate with no ill effects. So now we know. We would have had to find out eventually. Next time, say something beforehand."

He walked up behind her, took the bottle from her, drained the rest of it, and set it on the dresser.

"Finish what you were going to say."

She just stubbornly shook her head, her back still to him.

"You never thought you'd come to like having me inside your head, is that it?" He mused aloud. "You've spent years shoring up walls between you and the others, ever since you found out what you were. But it's lonely, being among them yet so far away. You hated having to create this bond with me, even as it helped ease that loneliness."

She didn't answer, only tightened her arms around herself. Resting his hands on her hips, he brushed the top of her head with his lips, inhaling the scent of her along with some other strange, though not unpleasant, smell. Something from the avariel, he assumed.

"My presence means you're not alone in the fight that the others can't help you with. The one you fight every minute of every day. The one inside your mind. Against the taint."

"If you want to leave, I won't stop you," she whispered. "Today. Tomorrow. When this is over. Or years from now. I may have grown used to this connection, but I'm not dependant on it. On you."

"A part of me is pleased to hear you say this. Another part of me wants you dependant on me. Rana, since we were children we have been tied together. It is… reassuring to know that we can choose this. If you are with me, I would have it be because you wish it, not because you have to be."

"I know. And I'm glad that we have this information. It just startled me when you disappeared."

"And it scares you how badly you missed me."

Rana burst out laughing and finally turned around to look up at him.

"Actually, I was just telling Aerie that I think I'm becoming rather smitten with Valygar. So… how long were you gone exactly? I'm afraid I barely noticed."

"You little shit," he growled. "I have to keep reminding him that this is a secret, so you tell that girl that you're interested inhim?"

"Girl talk. She guessed that I had my sights on someone, and Valygar seemed the safest bet. Anomen already thinks it, too. Plus I think it's funny."

And knowing Valygar, he'd probably find this uproarious, too.

"Imoen knows, though," Ran added, the humor winking out just as quickly as it had appeared. "I had to blackmail her about Khalid to ensure her silence, but… I'm beginning to doubt the point of it when she was the one I was most worried about finding out."

"Then let's drop the deception and let the chips fall where they may."

"Not yet. Now that we have another bhaalspawn to contend with, and we're about to lay siege to Sendai. I… I know Imoen. She can't hold a grudge. Not against me. She'll get over it."

He could hear the doubt in her voice, though he said nothing to reassure her. Because he doubted as well.

"And I'm afraid there's more now," he sighed.

"More what?"

He took a step back from her, knowing he was about to bring all that anger right back.

"While I was outside of town, I was approached by someone. My old mentor. Winksi."

He watched her eyes widen in disbelief.

"I thought… I _assumed_ he was dead! What does he want? I swear to the gods if you spent your time away being fed more lies about godhood by the same man that fed them to you before, I'm going to kick your ass. And his. Everyone's ass is getting kicked."

"Rana, Melissan isn't trying to save the bhaalspawn. She's trying to _hasten our demise._ She was charged, by Bhaal himself, to spearhead his resurrection. But somewhere along the way she abandoned that duty. Rana... she's now a devoted servant… of Cyric."


	4. Rana's Reckoning

_This was supposed to introduce the Mayor, mentioned in the previous chapter, and be a lot longer. Instead, something very different happened, tying up an end I hadn't even realized I had left loose for something like this, but after it was written, I didn't want to take it back. This is sort of the unravelling of Rana's secrets, her past choices coming to collect their due, and will lead into the rest of her group finally discovering the truth about everything. It's shorter than I would like, considering the length of time between chapters, but after everything that transpires, I didn't want to add even more._

 **Chapter 4: Rana's Reckoning**

 _Sarevok_

"Let me make one thing clear before we start, 'kay? I don't like you. I don't trust you. And if I find out you're lying to me, about anything, I will gut you."

"You know," Winski sighed, "Sarevok said much the same thing to me shortly after I met him. In case there was ever any doubt about you two being related…"

"Have I made myself clear?" Rana demanded, her eyes flashing in anger, like a rattlesnake's telltale warning.

"Crystal, my dear. Now, would you like to take a seat? My knees ache at just the thought of watching you pace throughout this little discussion."

Sarevok leaned against the wall of the small room in the Sawtooth Inn, arms crossed over his chest, but his relaxed demeanor belied his anxiety over watching the tense exchange between Rana and his former mentor.

She hadn't wanted to come with him to speak to Winksi. When trying to coax her, her mood had swung from joking deflections, to calm fury, to bristling indignation, and finally to withdrawn sadness before shifting back to one of the former. It wasn't difficult to guess why the old man caused that kind of turmoil, but the way she had begun to pull away from him since learning of Winski's sudden reappearance made him uneasy. And angry.

Stray thoughts gleaned from her side of their soul revealed a deep resurgence of fear within her. She was afraid Sarevok was going to once again allow himself to be seduced by the possibility of attaining power. That speaking with Winski again would rekindle that yearning for _more._ That, perhaps the old man had another trick up his sleeve in helping him achieve something he thought lost.

Knowing she thought that about him made him angry. Knowing she had good reason to think it made it worse. And knowing that she wasn't entirely wrong…

"Fine. Stand if you wish," Winski huffed, settling down into an armchair furthest from the fireplace and the fire roaring within it. "I trust that Sarevok has already explained why I'm here?"

"Melissan is a Death Stalker. Or used to be. Now she serves Cyric. She, like pretty much everyone else, wants me dead. And she's been aiming me at the Five to make her job of wiping them out a little bit easier on her."

"Correct. Did he also mention how I know all of this?"

"No. He said you would tell me that part," she said through gritted teeth and flinging a searing glance over her shoulder at Sarevok.

 _Oh, this will only get worse, little one,_ he thought to himself. He knew she wasn't going to react well to anything Winski had to tell her. Because he hadn't taken any of it well either. And it wouldn't take her long to piece together what Sarevok considered the silver lining of all of this. He could only hope that she'd come to trust him enough to not outright refuse to listen to the proposition that awaited her at the end of this meeting.

"I myself," Winksi murmured. "Am a Death Stalker."

"Which explains how you recognized what he was. Yeah, I don't find that surprising."

"Indeed, I knew what to look for. That violent streak isn't uncommon among orphaned children, however, the pleasure he seemed to take in his brutality was a clear indicator that something more was at work."

"So, if you were a Death Stalker, and you knew Sarevok was a bhaalspawn, why didn't you just kill him? That's what Bhaal wanted, right?"

"Yes, that was our mission after our Lord was killed. I had every intention of carrying out my duty, but something about him stayed my hand. In time, as I came to know him, I thought that training him as a Death Bringer, one of Bhaal's elite champions, would be a better idea. To use him as a weapon against other bhaalspawn."

"And I assume you weren't aware of being manipulated like this?" Rana asked, arching a brow at Sarevok.

"Not exactly," he replied. "Winski told me what he was when he told me what he suspected me of being. And I needed little convincing for undertaking the training required to become a Death Bringer, the rewards spoke for themselves."

"So you were okay with being used and eventually discarded once you'd served your purpose?" She asked incredulously.

"Obviously I never mentioned the part about his death also being required for Bhaal's resurrection," Winksi drawled. "Mostly because the details of how it would be done were still mostly shrouded in secrecy. Only Melissan knew the full extent of what the ritual entailed. I was only ever told to seek out and eliminate Bhaal's offspring, and that by doing so, our Lord would be reborn."

"But you weren't trying to have Bhaal brought back. You were trying to elevate Sarevok to our father's throne."

"Yes. Eventually. I came to care for him, and in doing so, came to believe that the Prophecy had some wiggle room. That one of the children could ascend instead, rather than the father. I truly believed that Sarevok could do it."

"Okay," Rana snorted, beginning to pace, making Winksi wince as he watched her move. "Now, what I don't understand is why you seemed to think that Bhaal's death meant that the portfolio of Murder was suddenly up for grabs. Cyric holds that power, taken from Bhaal, right? Did you expect for Sarevok to ascend and fight him for it, or that he'd hand that kind of power over to him? I mean, I know Cyric hasn't really been mentioned much in the grand scheme of things, not until very recently anyway, but I highly doubt that the last Bhaalspawn standing wins godhood like a prize for surviving to the end."

"Because we'd all been told that Cyric was insane. Lost to madness. It's difficult to hold onto a throne when your mind is gone. If a bhaalspawn could ascend, then he could inherit his father's power without even directly confronting the Mad God."

"But Cyric isn't insane," Rana whispered. "Not anymore."

"No, not anymore," Winski agreed. "All we know about that is that he created a book in an attempt to rewrite history, with himself as the god above all gods. But when he read that book, called the Cyranishad, he went mad. Now, all we know of the book, other than its insanity-inducing properties, is that, at some point, it was housed in Candlekeep. And, at some point recently, the other gods cured him of his madness."

Rana went very still.

"The book… the one in Gorion's study…"

"Rana?" Sarevok asked, eyes narrowing as she went pale. "What is it?"

"You know of what I speak," Winksi breathed, looking both terrified and amazed. "You've seen it. The Cyranishad."

"I… I think so. I used to break into Gorion's private study and read his books. One of them, kept on the highest shelf of his tallest bookcase that I could only reach by standing on chairs stacked on top of the coffee table, felt… wrong when I touched it. It scared me so I never tried to read it."

Sarevok and Winski stared at Rana as if she'd suddenly sprouted another head and begun conversing with herself.

"I'm gonna take a wild guess that not reading it was a good idea," Rana said, looking back and forth at both of them.

"If you _had,_ you wouldn't be sane, at the very least."

"So… I'm _pretty_ sure I didn't read it then? Would I even remember if I had?"

"Rana," Sarevok growled. "Now is not the time for your jokes. You might not be the most stable person in this room, and yes I realize that isn't saying much, but you clearly aren't mad!"

"Um, I hear you in my head, I talk to Cyric in my sleep, and I agreed to come to this little pow wow. Are you _positive_ I'm not crazy?" She asked dryly.

"Ilyrana, Gorion would have had you humanely put down if you had read that thing when you still lived in Candlekeep," Winski explained.

"Okay, but growing up _around_ the book, would that have had any kind of effect?"

That question gave them all pause.

Could it have affected her? Powerful magical items had been known to influence their surroundings, why would this be any different? Had Cyric known of Rana _because_ of the book, rather than just because he was a god?

She wasn't crazy. She also wasn't entirely sane either. That could be attributed to a thousand different things, of course… but what if Cyric had been warping her, knowingly or not, since she was a child?

"Moving right along," Rana said, picking up her speed as she paced. "We know Cyric is fine now, in a manner of speaking, so what that essentially means is that if anyone ascends, they have to fight him if they want to actually become a god."

"Yes, I'm afraid that ascension is off the table now, as he's far too powerful to face head on. Even if you somehow managed to form an alliance with some of the other gods, he will not go down easily."

"Fine. That was never _my_ dream, anyway. I guess this means it's time for you to drop any lingering resentment you might still be holding onto about dying, Sarevok. You never stood a chance."

"I thought I had myself very clear that there was no longer any bad feelings, little one," he responded wryly, earning a small smile from her.

Winski studied the pair, a bemused look on his face, before picking the conversation back up.

"Ilyrana, Melissan's betrayal of Bhaal means that Cyric has gained a powerful follower. After she healed me and smuggled me out Baldur's Gate, I learned of her creation of the Five, and what she planned to do with them. She has led them to believe that they will be resurrecting their father and will gain his favor for their efforts. In truth, she's been using them to wipe out scores of their weaker brethren, and with most of those gone now, they have their sights set on you, the last of Bhaal's most gifted."

Rana stopped pacing and turned to face Winski, her hands settling atop her sword hilts on each hip. Not necessarily an act of aggression, but a warning.

"This is the part where you tell me why you're here, isn't it? Other than a reunion with your old protege."

"It is," Winski agreed, but offered nothing further, sensing she wasn't quite yet ready to listen.

"You said that you _are_ a Death Stalker. Not _were._ Present tense, not past."

Sarevok's skin prickled as he felt her wrath churning and frothing just beneath the surface, rising in its intensity.

"That is correct. I _am_ a Death Stalker."

"You're going to ask for my help in bringing Bhaal back," she whispered, not a question, but a statement.

Winski glanced past her at Sarevok. The Death Bringer hiked one shoulder, at a loss for how best to proceed. She was going to be angry, but being blunt was perhaps the best course of action. If they tried to hide their idea from her, or dance around it for too long, she'd just let her temper slip the leash and lash out.

"Ilyrana, you have two paths before you," Winski began, his words slow with the weight of care so there would be no confusion or misunderstanding. "Each one can lead to death or victory, but only one has the chance of yielding a reward, other than your life and freedom, if you are victorious. And this same path has, perhaps, a better chance at succeeding."

"Tell me."

"Killing the remainder of the Five is the only constant in this matter, you already know you must do this. They lay between you and being released from all of this. I can help you. I know much of what you face, and I know Melissan. But I do not offer my aid without a price."

Rana's hands tightened around the hilts, but she nodded for him to continue.

"Instead of merely seeking an end to the Prophecy, one where Cyric comes out unscathed, all of his immense power intact, and nothing to stop him from continuing to meddle in your life, I ask that you take the second path. The one where we return your father to his rightful place as the Lord of Murder."

"And why should I care who holds that portfolio? Why would Cyric even give me a second thought once this is all over?"

"Because as long as just _one_ of you is still alive, his position is compromised. As long as even a shred of Bhaal's divinity still lingers, it can be harnessed. Cyric is hated by gods and mortals alike, and if there is any chance at undercutting his power, there will be those who seek to exploit it. Exploit _you."_

"And you think bringing Bhaal back will give Cyric a big enough headache for a while that I'll be left alone? No… you don't care a whit about my well being at all, so say what it is you're after. You want your Lord back. Why?"

"Ilyrana, if Bhaal is returned and wrests Murder away from Cyric, just think of what he'll reward us with. We'll be resurrecting a _god_ and aiding him in reclaiming his power. You will want for nothing ever again. No one would ever dare lay a hand on you in fear of provoking your father's wrath."

Sarevok had just enough time to feel the tidal wave of betrayal crash against his soul before the gaps in her inner walls, the ones that allowed him these little hints of what was going on inside, were shored up.

" _I fucking knew it,"_ Rana hissed, turning and taking a few steps away from both of them so she could direct the heat of her radiant gaze at them at the same time. " _How dare you tell him_ _ **anything**_ _about me, Sarevok! How dare you even think that I would go for something like this!"_

"Rana, listen to me. It's not enough to just fight this for the sake of being able to walk away once it's over. We're going up against a god and we need a god's help if we're to even survive. Winski can help shield you from Cyric's influence by using our father's taint to bolster your strength. Yours _and_ Bhaal's."

Rana snarled, her hands turning white from squeezing her sword hilts so fiercely. Before she could speak, Winski stood and put his hands out placatingly.

"He's right. Ilyrana, the essence that has been released with each passing of your siblings has been coalescing around the surviving Bhaalspawn, making each of you stronger the longer you hold out. I can tap into that and focus it to protect you. In doing so, I can bolster the link to your father, so that he can begin to waken."

"Begin to waken?!" She shouted, turning to face Winski. "You brainless idiot, _he's been awake!_ Where do you think the dreams come from?! The bone dagger, the one with the rivers of blood, I've _seen_ him and _heard_ him since I left Candlekeep!"

Rounding on Sarevok now, she pointed an accusatory finger at him.

"And you've had the same damn dreams! You _know_ he's been lurking just beneath the surface! And you _know_ I don't give a single fuck about power! This is all about you being able to get something out of all this since you can't get anything from me! And _you,_ Winski, have wanted to go down in history as someone who helped the next Lord of Murder ascend! And since that won't be Sarevok, and it certainly won't be me, you think bringing Bhaal back will cement your place in this whole fucked up saga! Well, fuck you both, you can bring him back on your own, I'm done here."

"Rana-" Sarevok grated, reaching for her as she swept past him to the door.

" _And I'm done with_ _ **you!**_ " She screamed at him, smacking his hand away when he laid it on her arm to stop her.

"Ilyrana, Melissan was the one who pointed Irenicus in your direction," Winski said, rising from his chair, the skin around his eyes creasing as he winced from the effort.

Rana stopped at the door, halfway out, holding it open. She didn't turn around around or say a word, just waited for Winski to finish.

"When she suspected I had betrayed our Lord by guiding Sarevok to ascension, she was the one who helped him get his servant into Baldur's Gate and into a position to bring about Sarevok's downfall."

"I already know about Tamoko," she spat, turning just her head to glare at them. "I don't care what Melissan's done, I never trusted her to begin with and she'll die like the rest. As will _you_ if I ever see you again, Winski Perorate."

Sarevok sighed as the door slammed, hard enough to temporarily quiet the noisy din of the inn downstairs.

"I told you she would likely react this way. Once she's cooled off, I'll speak to her again," Sarevok said, sitting down at the chair in front of the fire as Winski collapsed back into the other one.

"She handles her anger better than you did," Winski noted. "And yet it should be worse, considering how many of you have died at this point and that she is a vessel for the Slayer."

"Losing her soul to Irenicus, and constantly battling the Slayer back, has taught her much in controlling her more violent impulses. And she still fears and rejects the taint, for the most part. She hasn't drunk as deeply as I once had."

"I see. And you… are confident you can bring her around?" Winski asked him, hesitating to pry. "I still struggle with the idea that the two of you are intimate. Your once growing obsession with her doesn't make this entirely surprising, but her acceptance of you is. After all, you helped push her to where she is now, embroiled in a war for her life against her siblings."

"I'll make her understand," was all he replied, already deep in thought about how to do so.

He had to make her see that this was about more than just Bhaal bestowing power upon those who helped him reign again. She was defenseless again Cyric, Bhaal could help shield her from him. She was walking all but blindly into each encounter with the Five, and having Winski's vital insight into how Melissan's mind worked would be a boon.

She thought this was all about his desire for power. Which angered him. This was about _surviving_ first. What use was power if they all died before they could even use it? He wanted her to live through this war, and Winski was right, no one would seek to use her, exploit her, or harm her if they knew that doing so would incite her father's wrath.

Winski's labored breathing eventually pulled him from his brooding. He was seated as far away from the fire as he could get, and it was just embers now, but he was sweating as if he'd just exerted himself, and there was a chill in the room.

"What's wrong with you?"

"Hmm?" Winski asked, pulled from his own thoughts. "Nothing, just tired."

"Bullshit. Don't lie to me, old man. You're either hiding an injury, and a recent one, not the one I gave you years ago, or you're ill."

"It doesn't concern you."

"It _does_ concern me when I'm placing my faith in you and jeopardizing my place in all of this by listening to you. What are you hiding, Winski? Out with it."

"'Jeopardizing your place in all of this?' Son, you lost your place years ago. You know this. I believe what you _meant_ to say was ' _jeopardizing your place with_ _ **her**_ ' _."_

Sarevok rose and strode to his old mentor. Taking him by the throat, he lifted him till he was eye level.

"Do not mistake my enjoyment of being in her bed with my desire to attain what I've wanted longer than I've wanted anything else," he hissed, drawing the man close enough that the overwhelming smell of decay that he just noticed hung around him was strong enough to make his nose burn.

Releasing his grip, Winski dropped back down into his chair, and before he could recover, Sarevok ripped open the top of his soiled robes.

The veins running beneath his gray skin, from the bottom of his throat, down his chest and shoulders, were black as pitch. Yellow pus oozed from open sores stretched taut over the visible bones of his breast. Something was eating Winski alive, rotting him from the inside out.

Sarevok took a step back in shock, momentarily stunned by the sight, and wiped his hand across his tunic, fearing plague or worse.

"It's not contagious," Winski weezed, his breathing rattling in his lungs as he fought for air. "It's merely a physical reminder of my failures, and it grows worse accordingly, day by day."

"Who did this to you?" Sarevok murmured.

"I could argue that I did, but it was Melissan who wove the curse."

"Is it treatable?"

"I'm afraid not. After I discovered her plans to betray the Five, I tried to leave without her knowing I was aware of what she was doing, but she caught up to me. We fought, and I thought I'd debilitated her with a binding spell, but she hit me with this as I fled. I don't know how much time I have left, but I don't think it's much. A few weeks, perhaps."

Sarevok watched the old man retie his robes, covering the sores and the blackened veins forking out across his neck and chest. Some unpleasant feeling hardened inside his chest and then caught aflame as his rage encompassed it.

Melissan was to blame for siccing Irenicus on himself, and then Rana once he fell. She maneuvered the Five, and had manipulated them into killing Gromnir. Gods only know what else she was responsible for, but the knowledge that what had been done to Rana by Irenicus was more than enough on its own to kill her.

And now she had sentenced Winski to a drawn out, excruciating death.

 _Did I not leave him mortally wounded all those years ago? Striking him down for saving my life, after all he'd done for me, most of which I was unaware of until just recently._

The slow resurgence of his conscious was by far Sarevok's least favorite side effect of being tied to Rana. Whether it was due to their soul, or just being around her and having his every belief challenged by her, he wasn't sure, but it was irritating to say the least.

"I will see to it that Melissan gets what she deserves, old friend," Sarevok finally said.

Winski turned to look at him and offered a wan smile in response.

"I know you will, Sarevok. I know you will."

* * *

 _Rana_

Choosing to take the side roads leading back to her home, afraid of what she might do if some careless passerby knocked into her by accident, Rana gripped the hilts of her sheathed swords so tightly that one hand was numb. The other, the one boring the scars from the glass she'd clutched in order to die, rather than succumb to the Slayer all those nights ago, pulsed with agony in time with her rapidly beating heart.

Winski had been right about one thing. There were two paths before her. He was wrong about what lay down each one, though. Right now, she saw only two options open to her.

One, to throw herself at Imoen's feet and beg for forgiveness. Sarevok hadn't changed. At least not enough. Rana had been lonely, she saw that now. Combine that with their soul, their memories, and his mastery of manipulation, that seemed so finely honed to every weakness inside of her, and she hadn't stood a chance. Maybe it wasn't too late to fix things with her sister. Maybe it wasn't too late to come clean with everything.

On the other hand, she could gather up her gear and just leave. Thanks to Sarevok's timely discovery that they could indeed be separated, and the god's mercy that was the fact that distance resulted in a complete absence of the other inside their respective heads, she could disappear without a trace.

She knew how good a tracker Valygar was, she knew enough of how he worked that she could lay enough false trails to throw him off her scent just long enough to go to ground. She could hide out, biding her time and strength, until the Five grew impatient and made their move. And when they did, she would bring down the Nine Hells upon them all. Alone. With no one there to judge her enjoyment of the violence, or be disgusted at her excessive use of force and the taint behind it. Or, in Sarevok's case, revel in her embracing the power she usually fought to keep contained.

Valygar would understand why she left, he wouldn't like it, and she doubted he'd ever give up trying to find her, but under the hurt and anger he wouldn't blame her. Imoen… once, she would have known exactly how her sister would respond to any given scenario. Now, she wasn't sure, and that uncertainty ate at her, because she knew she was the one who was responsible for the rift between them, and her sudden ignorance of how Imoen would feel about Rana's abandonment.

The others would understand, too, in time. And maybe even be relieved that Rana no longer led them.

That thought alone kept her from choosing that path. She's be damned if she let Jaheira or Kivan feel elated that they no longer had to watch her descent into depravity, no longer had to be complicit to the lines she toed, or feel guilty when Rana turned her back on the flocks of people who asked for her aid with some trouble or other.

Tripping over an upraised root, and hissing out a curse at herself for not paying attention to her surroundings, Rana glared at the trees that had sprouted up around her as she made her way out of town and toward her home. Each bare limb, shed of its leaves as Autumn began to surrender to Winter, reminded her of herself, shed of everything that made her whole, made her alive. She was dead inside without Imoen. And without Sarevok, which made her vision turn red, not with Infravision, but pure malice and bitterness.

The rage of betrayal rose up inside her, demanding an outlet for its might, so she gave it one. Releasing her grip on her swords, she swung her unscarred hand, closed into a fist, at the nearest tree. The memories of the sweet nothings Sarevok uttered to her, both in bed and out, bubbled up to fuel the fires of her wrath, blending with the guilt of what had happened between her and Imoen.

Her fist connected with the bark. Pain lanced up her arm, from the knuckles to her shoulder, and she welcomed it, closing her eyes to savor the feeling. She deserved it, this small amount of pain, an appetizer for what she should expect once it came time for retribution. Not just her own upon the world. But the world's retribution on her, as well.

When she opened her eyes, she stumbled away from the tree, eyes wide with disbelief. Where once stood a tall, pale, dormant, but _living_ thing, now sat a smoking husk. Rivulets of fire pulsed in the breeze, the ley lines of crystallized sap like veins against the charred bark.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, "I didn't mean… I didn't _know_ I could…"

Tears welled and broke their dams, but she couldn't exactly say why. Nor could she explain this need to apologize to a dead tree. To make its ashen, slowly crumbling form understand she hadn't meant to kill it. That she had struck it to hurt _herself,_ to unleash the anger and the hurt, knowing it could withstand the blow, not ever imagining she could inflict this sort of damage.

Where had the fire come from? Her, obviously, but she was no mage. And she'd never been able to channel her Bhaal abilities in the form of flame. She refused to use those gifts at all, even to heal herself or others, never even mentioning to anyone that she could.

Looking down at her hand, she saw her knuckles were red, scratched from the bark, miniscule amounts of blood welling from the scuffs. The blood smoked, like the tree. Like when it did when the Slayer was working its way out of her. It was quiet now, but that comfort was fleeting in the face of what had just happened.

"I'm sorry," she said again, and turned away to trudge back towards home.

 _How many creatures, how many people, have I killed and never once thought about apologizing to their corpses? Here I am sobbing over a fucking tree as I leave miles of bones and broken lives behind me, hardly glancing back as I try to ignore the growing stench._

"You're smaller than I expected."

Rana whirled around, masking her face so her wince wouldn't show as she slid her swords free. She looked up in the face of what should be a stranger, but Sarevok had shown him to her in her mind, and she recognized him as the Barbarian.

"I get that a lot," she replied, shifting slightly to look more relaxed in hopes of drawing a conversation out while her mind worked furiously to figure out what she was going to do.

She was alone, half a mile from her house and help, and she'd be _damned_ if she called out to Sarevok.

"You know why I'm here," he said, not a question.

"You think I killed your girlfriend. Or your sister?"

If Sarevok was right, the woman she'd assassinated a few weeks ago had been both.

"Did you?"

His voice was deep, with only a trace of a northern accent, and there was no anger or accusation in his tone.

Rana tilted her head to the side, studying him as she wondered how to answer. She could lie, of course, and see where that got her, but she didn't want to. For all she knew, he had been hunting the blonde haired woman she'd killed, trying to kill her for some old wrong or for the simple fact they were Bhaalspawn. Maybe he wasn't here for vengeance.

Her eyes flicked across his features, the dusting of copper stubble across his strong jaw, the tribal scars etched into his arms and across his exposed chest. He wore some leather and fur trappings, but not nearly enough to protect him from the mounting cold. Then again, he was probably accustomed to much harsher climes than this.

He was ruggedly handsome, the kind of man that would catch the eye of any creature unfortunate enough to be attracted to that gender.

 _I bet he's an asshole, too._

Rana found herself briefly imagining this encounter turning into a seduction. One not unlike the kind Sarevok had pulled on her. They would fight, their blood demanded it, but it didn't have to end in death. Only in submission. And once that happened, she could drop the walls erected around her mind and let Sarevok see just how serious she was about being done with him.

The thought of his fury, his possessiveness, and the ensuing bloodshed he'd wreak because of what he'd see in her mind aroused her more than the thought of bedding the Barbarian.

 _Not so done, are you, ya idiot?_

"Well?" The Barbarian asked, evincing the first note of the anger lurking beneath his stony facade. "Did you kill her?"

"Yes. I did."

Two lethal double-headed axes appeared in his hands, unsheathed from his back.

 _If he kills me, will Sarevok hunt him down with the same single-minded ferocity? He has the same exact look in his eyes as Kivan had when he finally faced Tazok. Vengeance at any cost. Because the highest price has already been paid._

She knew the answer, deep down. And knowing only made his betrayal that much worse.

"Her name was Ara'stacia. She was my clanmate. My sister by Bhaal. My wife. _The mother of my two children!"_

Rana shifted back a step, then another, gasping as the Barbarian brandished his axes and began to advance on her.

 _Children._

The blows came fast, and she was slow to respond, giving ground as she tried to block those axes with dwindling resolve.

 _I'm a monster. This man was once me. Fighting the demons that tore families apart for sport. I hunted that woman- Ara'stacia- down like a deer, for no reason other than petty anger directed at everyone else but her. I didn't even give her a chance to fight back. She was a mother._ _ **Children.**_

Rana's back hit something, initially thought to be firm, but it gave way and she tumbled onto her back, a cloud of ash obscuring her vision and obstructing her throat.

The tree. The dead tree.

Rolling to her feet, hacking up ash and wiping at her eyes, she felt an axe _whoosh!_ overhead, barely missing her as the Barbarian struck blindly into the gray cloud billowing out around them.

She had thought of retribution, not realizing it would come for her so soon. She would fight, for no other reason than her sudden fear of the Hell that awaited her should she fall. She had long clung to some hope that she'd be given a pass and end up somewhere else after she died. Some god showing her mercy in light of what she had been born into. As time went on, she would jokingly ponder accepting one of the lesser circles of Hell, places reserved for the bad, but not irredeemably evil. Now, terror at the epiphany that the darkest, deepest pits were likely what awaited her, overruled the guilt and horror of what she had brought upon herself.

White hot agony lashed across the left side of her face from his backhand, the force of the blow knocking her right back down, her breath ripped out of her lungs at the impact.

" _Get up. You haven't suffered nearly enough."_

Heaving for air, Rana got to one knee, watching the man pace back and forth as he waited for her to rise.

"I… didn't know," she gasped out. "Didn't know she was a… mother."

"Your ignorance will not save you! It did not save the others who thought to hunt us down! You will _pay_ for what you stole, elven bitch!"

Rana slapped his axes aside with her swords when he struck next, and straightened to stand before him, her disgust at what she was about to do was likely plain on her face.

She deserved to die today.

But she was a coward.

"That wasn't a plea for mercy. I only ask you tell her that when you see her again in a few moments."

His answering roar shook the woods around them, but it did nothing against the tidal wave of strength coiling around her as she embraced the taint and its poisoned promises of power.

Steel clanged against steel as she parried his strikes, using her superior speed, and enhanced strength, to set up counter attacks at every opening. He afforded her few, but when they stepped away from each other after several moments, sweating and panting as they took a few seconds respite, he sported several shallow cuts across his legs and arms while she still only had the bruise on her face from the back of his hand.

"Throw down your swords and I'll make it quick," he told her, "Perhaps I'll even spare _your_ mate. The sembian Deathbringer."

Rana hissed, eyes glowing with feral wrath at the mention of him going after Sarevok. It didn't matter in this moment what he had done. He would not pay for her crimes.

Not waiting for him to attack again, she rushed him, aiming at his unprotected femoral artery. He blocked it, and his elbow connected with her stomach, again knocking the air out of her as she crashed to the ground. Rolling onto her back, she caught his axes with her crossed blades, only scant centimeters from her throat. Bracing himself on one knee, he forced his considerable weight down on her, and two thin lines blossomed with blood across her chest as her own swords bit into her skin.

" _I cut my teeth on men stronger than you,"_ she snarled, the sharp pain from her swords coming to rest on her clavicles, then biting down into them as well, didn't register in her mind as the taint screamed at her to kill.

" _And yet you're about to die,"_ the Barbarian responded through gritted teeth, the vein in his neck bulging from exertion.

Rana brought her knees up, gathered her strength, and launched her feet into his chest, hurling him off of her. Scrambling to her feet, she leapt atop him, bringing both swords plunging down at his throat. Releasing his axes, he caught her wrists just as the tips penetrated his skin, then bucked her off, yanking the weapons out of her hands when she rolled.

Throwing her swords to the ground, he charged her, both of them unarmed now, and she would have surely been doomed if she wasn't being fed by the taint. Dodging a punch, she kicked at his knee, the sound of it crunching beneath her foot making her grin with excitement. He went down, but not before connecting a stiff arm to her waist. Pain erupted in her pelvis at the blow, but she was so consumed now with the need to kill that she hardly noticed it.

He groped around for an axe, and swung it in a devastating arch before him when he found one, slicing across her outer thigh when she tried to close on him. He was still down on one knee, fighting with the desperation of a crippled lion. Teeth bared in both snarl and grin, Rana stalked just out of reach, waiting for her chance to finish him off.

" _Come on, craven one! I'm down, what are you waiting for?!"_

 _Need a weapon…_

Her swords lay behind him, and she doubted he would allow her to draw close enough to retrieve them.

 _You_ _ **are**_ _a weapon!_ The taint seemed to scream at her as she seized on the idea of killing him with her bare hands.

She darted forward, only to dance back out of reach when he swung at her. She repeated this, again and again, wearing them both out in the process, her legs trembling from the pain radiating throughout her lower body.

Finally, his swing was sluggish, and he nearly overbalanced from it. Lunging toward him, she grabbed at his neck, using it to swing herself around so that she stood just behind him, her legs pressing into his back. Wrapping a forearm across his throat to grasp the bottom of his jaw, she brought her other arm around the front of his head.

He dropped the axe to grab at her hands, the weapon useless with her this close to him. She braced her legs against him, using the corded muscle of his back and shoulders to help support herself and provide leverage. Slowly, inch by inch, she began to twist.

His nails, short and blunt, dug into her arms, bruising her to the bone as he tried to stop her. Gritting her teeth, she used every drop of tainted strength left in her battered body to crack his neck, but they sat deadlocked, his head turned painfully, but not at the angle necessary to break. One of his hands suddenly released its deathgrip on her and began trying to strike at her over his shoulder, forcing her to turn her upper body to avoid the blows or deflect them with her upper arms.

" _You_ _ **will**_ _die!"_ She screamed.

Between hits, she tightened her grip, her own nails now imbedded in his face. When he tried to seize her from behind and haul her over his shoulder, she used the split second of his distraction, the strength of his grip on her arms diverted when he grasped her shirt, and jerked with all her might.

She fell to her side, heaving for air, as his body collapsed beside her, his head turned almost completely around, staring at her with wide, dead eyes. She stared back, shuddering from pain and exhaustion as the taint receded and her body caught up to what it had just endured.

Tears fell to the dirt beneath her face, mingling with the ash that covered it, as she watched his body begin to glow with soft, golden light. Sobs broke from her chest when he faded into nothing before her, yet another brother dead by her hand.

One last thought whispered through her mind before unconsciousness overtook her.

 _What have I become?_

* * *

 _Sarevok_

"What do you mean _no one knows where she is?!"_ Sarevok roared, turning to pick up his sword that he had just laid down on his dresser before Valygar burst into his room.

It was well past nightfall, hours after Rana had stormed from the inn and the meeting with Winski. He had lingered, speaking to his old mentor of his affliction and how best to bring Rana around to the idea of bringing Bhaal back. When he noticed the sun had set, he made his way back to the house, resolved to let the matter rest until the morning, after the meeting with the Mayor that she had gotten an invitation to much earlier in the day.

"Sarevok, she left with you hours ago, saying the two of you had business in town, remember? You were the last to see her."

"We had a disagreement, I thought she was coming home," he snarled, dread beginning to grow inside of him from his foolishness for letting her leave his side and just assuming he knew her destination.

 _She wouldn't leave. And if she ran into trouble, she would have reached out to me._

That dread morphed into fear.

 _Not if she was truly that angry. Her pride would keep her from asking for my help, even if it meant her death._

Desperately, he flung his will out, blindly tearing in all directions as he searched for some sign of her, some clue as to where she might be.

"Sarevok, what's wrong? Have you found her?" Valygar asked, grabbing the larger man's shoulder when Sarevok's brow furrowed in confusion.

"She's... right outside?"

The sound of the front door opening downstairs had both men heading for the staircase. When they reached the bottom, they both stopped at the sight before them.

Rana leaned against the door frame, the door still open behind her. Her head hung forward, her hair free, tangled and matted with blood. More blood was smeared across her chest, oozing from slices crisscrossed into her skin, the white of bone peaking out where her clavicles had been cut into. What looked to be soot clung to her ragged shirt and leggings, and one boot was soaked in blood that ran from a gash across her thigh. When she raised her head to look at them, the left side of her face was black and purple, one eye swollen shut.

"Her name… was Ara'stacia," Rana rasped out, her voice hoarse and almost unrecognizable. "She was… my sister. She was a wife. She had… children. Today, I… orphaned them."

Sarevok and Valygar both rushed forward when her legs buckled, just reaching her before she hit the floor.


	5. Father

**Chapter 5: Father**

 _Jaheira_

Jaheira watched the rise and fall of Rana's chest from the armchair in the corner of the bedroom; her post for the last hour.

They were going on the second day since she appeared at the door, covered in ash and blood. Between the concerted efforts of herself, Anomen, and Aerie, they had stabilized her, healing the extensive injuries while silently cataloguing them, along with the bruises blossoming beneath the blood that Chauntia gently wiped away while they worked.

A broken pelvis. Shattered cheekbone. Dislocated shoulder. Two cracked ribs. A deep cut on one leg that was still pink and promised to be quite a scar. The cuts on her chest, beginning from each side of her throat, crisscrossing, and ending at the top of each breast, had healed into twin white lines.

She had been unconscious as they worked on her. And two nights later, she still had not woken.

At the start of all this, when she and Khalid had watched two bedraggled young women, barely more than children, stumble wearily into the Friendly Arm Inn, she had vowed to protect her late friend's charge. To deliver her safely from one end of this war to the other.

Not a day went by that she didn't think of how utterly she had failed Gorion.

Not only had she allowed Rana to be broken, in body and soul, but her mind was now shattered along with the rest of her. She knew the blame did not rest solely on her own shoulders, Rana was a woman grown after all, but she felt responsible for what lay on that bed. Every scar, every life taken by the smaller woman, everything she'd done, hadn't done, and had done to her, sat heavily on Jaheira's spirit.

"Anything?"

Jaheira turned her head to look at Chauntia as she entered the room, crossing it quietly to lay a hand on Rana's forehead, brushing away lank locks of hair.

"No, she sleeps still."

"Why?" The Chultan woman whispered. "You healed her, and there were no signs of poison or anything else, how is it she hasn't woken yet?"

"I suspect her coma is self-induced," the druid replied, her voice a little hoarse from misuse.

"You mean she won't wake up because she doesn't want to?"

"Valygar said that she admitted to killing that bhaalspawn woman right before she passed out. That the woman had children. And after retracing her steps, he and Sarevok discovered that her mate had come to avenge her death. I think the ghosts that Rana has been fleeing from are finally beginning to catch up to her. She ran from the guilt as long as she could, lying every step of the way, and now that it's beaten her, she can't bear to face it."

That had come out a bit harsher than she had intended, but she was still angry that Rana had deceived her, deceived them all, about killing that woman.

"But… I thought the bhaalspawn were meant to kill each other? Why would she feel guilty for doing something she's _supposed_ to do?"

"Because murdering one of the lesser ones is unnecessary!" Jaheira snapped. "She didn't do it because she had to, she did it because she wanted to! Then lied about it!"

Chauntia gazed thoughtfully at her for a moment before looking back down at Rana, still lightly stroking her hair.

 _Yet another one fallen under the girl's influence. Just like Valygar. What is it going to take for them all to see that Rana isn't who she pretends to be? That she's a wolf pretending to be a fox? Underneath that small, cunning facade lies a monster capable of so much more destruction than appearances would have us believe._

"Had I been through what she's been through, I don't think I would have turned out much different. I can't blame her for what she's done. Being cursed by her father and judged for something she has little control over."

Chauntia's words felt like a slap in the face, and Jaheira's ire grew at her impertinence.

"You speak with the naivete of the young and sheltered. There is only so much leeway that can be given for the crimes she has committed. Eventually, she must be held accountable."

"By who?"

"By the gods! By the balance! She may be half-god, but that does not make her above reproach! If the Time of Troubles taught us anything, it's that _no one_ can escape the consequences of their actions."

The slender woman stared hard at Jaheira, clearly wanting to argue, but whatever counter she was forming in her mind was interrupted by Sarevok entering the room.

He said nothing to either of them as he approached Rana, those bird-of-prey eyes flicking across the bruises and new scars. Appraising her of new weaknesses? Or something else?

She had seen the way he looked at her, and the way that look had subtly shifted over these past few months. He hadn't hidden the rage and jealousy very well in the beginning, but now he was far more guarded, because she was certain he had far more to hide.

She would never have considered he had developed some form of attachment to Rana if she hadn't seen it for herself. Hearing him roar for a healer, Jaheira had rushed into the dining room to find Valygar sweeping the remains of dinner off the table as Sarevok laid her down upon it. His face had been stricken with concern. With fear.

Seeing Rana briefly cradled in his arms, her pale form almost white against his dark skin, had been jarring. His reaction to her hideous wounds, coupled with the amount of times he took watch over her, and stopped by to check on her as he was doing now, forced Jaheira to acknowledge the obvious.

What she didn't know was if the attraction, or whatever it was, was mutual. There had been hints, many of them, but Jaheira had ignored them simply because she never could have conceived of the notion of Rana coming to care about him. But Rana wasn't Rana anymore. The young woman who once sought her advice for obstacles both great and small was now little more than a stranger to her. The old Rana would have never gotten involved with a man like Sarevok, her own _half-brother,_ but then, she never would have allowed his evil to return to this world, either.

Something had happened between the two bhaalspawn, she was sure of it. She still rebelled against the very thought of it, but refusing to see the truth when it was laid bare before her was too dangerous now. She was certain their trip back to the old temple of Bhaal had something to do with it, as well.

Rana's insistence that just she and Sarevok would go there alone had struck Jaheira as wrong, but at the time, she had still been reeling from the revelation of the Harper attack and what Gorion had done to their memories. The organization had been rife with in-fighting during that time, splinter cells breaking off to do what they thought was right during the Time of Troubles. She had heard that some of them had begun targeting the Bhaalspawn children, and that they had been exiled from the Harpers. Or outright hunted down and executed.

That Gorion had been a part of one of those groups was something she still struggled to believe. She didn't doubt that Rana believed it, but she wasn't entirely convinced that Gorion had actually participated in the slaughter of innocent children. After all, he was a Harper until his dying day.

A thought took root in her mind, and she stored it away to be inspected later.

For now, she watched Sarevok stare down at her charge, her eyes narrowed, trying to spot any clue as to what was going on inside his mind.

"There's been no change," Chauntia whispered to him, low enough that it was obvious she did not wish for Jaheira to hear their exchange. "Can you… can you reach her? Like you did before? When she had that nightmare?"

Reach her? What was she talking about?

Sarevok shook his head, his brow furrowing briefly as if annoyed.

"Why not?" The girl asked, easing closer to the warrior, the need for an answer to her question clear on her face.

How the girl dared get that close to him was a mystery to the druid. She seemed utterly unafraid. Surely she wasn't that stupid? To not know what he was? Even if a person didn't know of his history, the aura of malice that poured off of him should have been enough to warn them away.

"Because he's keeping me out," Sarevok eventually replied, so softly that Jaheira almost missed it.

"Who-" Jaheira spoke up, but before she could finish, she was interrupted.

" _Get away from her."_

Jaheira, Chauntia, and Sarevok turned to see Imoen standing in the doorway, clutching the frame in a white-knuckled grip, her gaze locked on the Deathbringer.

"You stay away from her, Sarevok," Imoen hissed vehemently, just loud enough to hear. "Ever since you crawled out of Hell everything has been going from bad to worse. You've sucked out what good was left in my sister and turned her into a monster like you. I can't force you to leave, but if you so much as touch her one more time… I'll destroy you so completely there won't be anything left of you to come back again."

"Ah, so this is the route you've chosen to take," Sarevok replied, turning to face the girl completely. "You would pretend that I am responsible for everything Rana is and is not. That it's my fault she's not what you want her to be, or what she used to be. By blaming me, you can wash your hands of your own guilt, while at the same time purge the impotent rage brought on by the fact that you haven't been able to protect her as efficiently as she has you."

"Don't try and play your mind games with me! You might have been able to twist her but I see you for what you really are. A coward. A coward who tries to manipulate power from those around you because you can't stand the fact that you're a nobody now!"

"Careful, mageling. Our sister is the only thing standing between me and the rest of you and she's presently unconscious. _Don't push it."_

"You don't scare me," Imoen whispered back as her hands slowly moved to spell readiness.

Jaheira rose from her seat and stepped forward just enough to get Imoen's attention, making sure not to plant herself directly in the middle, as she was _not_ going to take a hit for Sarevok should the girl attack.

"I know you're upset, child, but this is not the time nor the place for this."

"No, it's _way_ past the time for this, Jaheira," Imoen replied. "If you had any idea what I know about what's been going on between them, you wouldn't be trying to stop me from killing him."

"I do not doubt that at all, but a sick room is not the place you want to be hurling spells. You could hit Rana."

The brief flicker of unconcerned amusement in Imoen's eyes made Jaheira's stomach clench. She needed answers. _Now._

"Jaheira, you should-"

The druid didn't let her finish, she just grabbed her by the arm and hauled her out of the room, heading for her own.

"Let me go! What are you doing?!"

"I need to speak with you. You are going to tell me what you know. _What you should have told me as soon as you found out."_

Slamming her bedroom door closed behind them, she pulled the girl around the face her.

"Tell me what's going on, Imoen."

"This doesn't concern you, Jaheira! I can handle it-"

"Doesn't concern me?! I have lost nearly everything trying to keep you and Rana safe. Rana has repaid that with lies, and you are about to do the same with your secrets!"

"They aren't _my_ secrets," the girl spat.

"Rana's secrets, then. Which are likely going to get us all killed. Tell me what you know, Imoen, so I can help you."

"I don't need your help."

It was nearly the same thing Rana had said to her weeks ago. When she'd wanted to talk to her about that Protection from Evil spell and how it had affected her. She hadn't fought nearly hard enough to get through that thick head of hers, and she was not about to make that mistake a second time. Not with Imoen.

"Listen to me, Imoen," Jaheira hissed, startling the girl with her anger. "One of the many mistakes that Rana has made since this all started, and one I blame myself for letting happen, is her trying to shut everyone out from what she's going through. What the burden of the knowledge of her parentage puts on her. What it's like to live with the taint. By closing herself off, she has inevitably grown lonely. I need to know if my fears are valid. If she's done something terrible because of that loneliness."

Imoen closed her eyes and let out a shaky sigh.

"If you have to ask, then I think you already know."

"I want you to say it."

Imoen huffed out a bitter laugh.

"Fine. You wanna hear the truth? She's been sharing Sarevok's bed. I'm not sure how long, or rather, I'm not sure if this was going on before they went to that temple of Bhaal. Pretty sure it was, or at least something was."

Jaheira swallowed the bile trying to rise up in her throat.

"And that's not all of it," Imoen continued. "She worships Mask now. Not sure how long on that either, but I'm gonna hazard a guess that this started back in Amn. Let's see, what else... Oh! Because of her shared soul with Sarevok, they can speak telepathically to one another. He wants her to ascend, so he can have the favor of a goddess, and while she swears she doesn't plan going through with it, I'm not entirely convinced she won't try and oblige him. She seems to be pretty aware of his manipulations, but either doesn't care about them, or doesn't take them seriously enough."

"I should have known…" Jaheira murmured, staggering away and towards the liquor cabinet.

"Yeah, well, in your defense, it's really hard for anyone to actually imagine, let alone accept, what Rana's been doing."

Pouring herself a glass of wine, and one for Imoen as well, she collapsed into a nearby chair.

"Who else knows?"

"Haer'Dalis, because I told him, and he wasn't at all surprised or concerned, but that's not unusual. Viconia knows, too, and has been helping keep the secret. I don't know of anyone else."

"Valygar knows. He has to. As ardently as he's defended Sarevok's place in this group, and as much as he's sided with Rana in matters I did not expect him to, he has to have known."

"Do you think Keldorn knows?" Imoen asked softly, sitting on the edge of the chair across from her and taking a sip of the wine.

This was, perhaps, the greatest question of all. Does Keldorn know? If so, why hasn't he said anything? Why would he condone this?

"I don't know, but I'm going to ask him," Jaheira stated, draining her wine and rising to her feet, unable to just sit still while all of this roiled in her mind. "In the meantime, keep an eye on Sarevok, but _do not_ approach him as you just did. Do you recall when I told you that he tried to kill me during the drow raid? He's too clever to make a mistake like that again, especially with you, and especially here in this house. But if you lose your temper and strike, it'll be all the justification he needs. Do not give him an excuse to attack you, godchild. If we're to put an end to all this, and him in particular, we need to do this at the right time, and in the right way."

"Fine, but you better plan all this out before Rana wakes up. The sooner we get rid of him, the sooner we can start trying to undo whatever it is he's done to her."

"I agree. I will go and speak with Keldorn. Watch yourself."

Jaheira left the room and strode for the front door, rapidly trying to prepare herself for her talk with the paladin. If there was anyone in this group that would know what to do, it was him. And if he'd been just as blind as she had been, she needed to convince him of how serious, and real, this all was.

Heading into town and toward the mines where Keldorn was taking watch, she steeled herself for the possibility that he _had_ known about Rana's involvement with Sarevok. If that was the case, she would need to make him see that the Deathbringer was beyond any hope of redemption.

Unlike Imoen, however, Jaheira was beginning to think that perhaps Rana was too.

 _Sarevok_

Hands clenched into fists as he paced restlessly inside his bedroom, Sarevok glanced once more out the window, the dying light making him squint as he searched for any sign of Chauntia and Valygar.

Seeing nothing, he snarled out a curse and only just barely refrained from hurling a piece of furniture in his mounting impatience.

For two days he had been unsuccessful in reaching Rana. Two days spent completely blocked out of her mind, not knowing if the Slayer was just about to burst forth, if she was locked inside nightmares, or only the gods knew what else. Or just one god, rather.

He was certain Cyric was behind her coma. There was no other explanation for not being able to peek inside her mind while she slept, or to feel her when he brushed his part of their soul against hers.

Each hour that ticked by with no sign of her waking made his dread deepen. Each time he woke from a brief respite and went to check on her he could almost see the weight slowly dropping from her slim frame. Her cheeks gradually becoming sunken. Her skin paling even further.

She was slipping away, minute by minute, and they were all powerless to stop it. All except one.

A flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye, from the window, had him striding to it to peer into the dusk.

Chauntia and Valygar's forms bled from one shadow to the next, making their way toward the house. With a cloaked form stumbling along behind them.

Unlocking his door, he waited impatiently for them to quietly enter the house and make their way upstairs. When he heard the sound of their footsteps, he opened the door just wide enough for them to slip through before shutting and locking it.

"Where is she?" Winski asked, lowering his hood, his eyes creased with pain and the effort not to wheeze from his hurried trip from the inn.

"In her room right down the hall. Imoen is in there right now. Jaheira left some time ago, which leaves the avariel and the other two rangers here in the house. The rest are in town."

"I'll go see if I can get Imoen to leave the room, I asked Mezoar to set dinner out, so I'll tell her I'll take over watching Rana while she goes downstairs to eat," Chauntia said, shrugging out of her cloak and straightening her braids so as not to look as if she'd just been outside.

"As soon as she leaves, I'll stand guard outside her door and stop anyone if they try to go in. Understand that time is of the essence here," Valygar warned. "This could get ugly if any of the others get suspicious. Or if they spot this guy. I hope you know what you're doing."

 _As do I._

"Just get me in that room with her," Winski said. "Too much time has passed already, the longer we wait, the lower the probability is that this will work."

"How long do you need?" Sarevok asked him, reaching for his sheathed sword, preparing for the possibility that he might have to incur Rana's unforgiving hatred if any of the others tried to interfere.

"I have no way of knowing just yet. Could be a few minutes. Could be hours."

"We don't have hours," Valygar growled. "Someone, likely Imoen, will want to see her by then."

"Then you need to be asking yourself whose life is more important: Rana's or theirs," Winski replied.

"I'm going now," Chauntia cut in before the ranger could answer. "Pray I can get Imoen to go away first."

The girl slipped back out of the room and Sarevok locked it behind her before leaning against the frame to listen. Valygar joined him, head cocked for the sound of Imoen going downstairs.

"Who is this guy, by the way?"

"My old mentor, previously thought to have been dead. Rana's old companions will recognize him and attack on sight."

"I figured it was something complicated like that," the ranger sighed. "For once, couldn't we do something that doesn't require secrecy? I'm gonna ask Rana for a raise after this."

"Assuming Winski is successful. Because if he's not, you'll likely never get the chance to," Sarevok murmured gravely.

Valygar met his eyes, a shared look passing between them. An acknowledgement. An understanding.

"I'll keep them out," Valygar promised quietly. "By any means necessary. You just wake her up."

Footsteps in the hall made them all tense. They waited until the sound of Imoen heading downstairs dwindled to nothing. After another minute, Valygar opened the door, went to the bannister to make sure no one was up and about, then signaled for them to move.

Pulling Winski behind him, Sarevok walked past the ranger and into Rana's room, locking the door before turning to the bed.

Laying on her side, half curled around a pillow, she looked like a porcelain doll against the red sheets of her large bed. Rook poked his head up from his spot in her hair, mewing despondently at them as they approached. Gently extracting the kitten, he handed it off to Chauntia who hovered nearby.

Winski pulled a chair right up to the side of the bed and began peeling off his gloves, revealing the blackened veins beneath his paper thin skin. Sarevok wanted to protest to him touching her, out of fear for the disease he carried, but forced himself to remain silent, trusting that the mage had been right about the curse not being contagious.

"What do you want me to do?" He asked the man.

"Stay close. And if this works, and she wakes, remember what we talked about. If Rana is ever to have even the slightest hope of living a life resembling normalcy, Bhaal _must_ be returned. Cyric will not stop until she is dead, even if she somehow rids herself of her divinity. _Remember."_

"Why bring this up now? What does-"

" _And be silent!"_ Winski snapped, closing his eyes as his fingers lightly touched Rana's forehead with one hand, and her chest with the other.

Sarevok looked down at the old man.

Emotions too complicated and varied raced through him, and he found himself seizing upon hope the hardest. Not just for Rana, but for Winski, as well.

 _Imoen_

Stepping outside, her belly full of seared salmon and roasted potatoes, Imoen began to meander among the massive trees surrounding the Rookery. Once she found the worn, moss-covered boulder that she'd discovered some time ago, she plopped down and withdrew a pipe from her pocket. Stuffing it with fragrant herbs, and taking a glance around to make sure she was alone, she conjured up a small gout of flame to light it.

Inhaling deeply, she slumped a little and closed her eyes, savoring the momentary solitude and giddiness brought on by the mixture.

Her sweet bard had introduced this particular blend to her a couple of weeks ago, and she sought out the brief moments she could indulge a little when she began to feel overwhelmed by everything happening around her. These moments had become much more frequent since Rana had begun widening the gulf between them.

She knew she should be up there, watching over her sister, instead of Chauntia doing it, but watching her sleep, with the weight of Rana's plummet from grace bearing down on her, was stifling.

 _Just a few more minutes…_ she told herself, taking another drag on the pipe.

"Imoen?"

Jumping to her feet, the pipe dropping from her hands, Imoen spun around, arms raised, words of power ready at her lips, and searched the darkness for the feminine voice.

"Who's there? Show yourself! Don't think I won't start throwing fireballs!"

Melissan stepped out of the shadows, hands raised placatingly.

"Please, I don't want any trouble. I've been waiting till you were alone so I could speak with you."

Imoen's surprise at seeing the woman instantly turned to suspicion.

"Shouldn't it be Rana you wanna talk to? Why have you been skulking around in the shadows waiting for _me?"_

"Because, if the rumors are even half true, I'm afraid that approaching Ilyrana will only result in violence."

"Rumors? I think you got more to worry about than that, lady. That map you had Balthazar give us? Well it sucked. It omitted a lot of pertinent information, like the existence of this very town, for instance, and the location of Sendai. Oh! And we conveniently got followed by Balthazar's mercenaries and herded into a death trap, where Abazigal's forces then surrounded us. So, if you thought you could come here and appeal to my better grasp on sanity, and good natured charm, rather than deal with Rana's lack of the above, then whoo buddy you got another thing coming."

Melissan's lips quirked, and she made an obvious show of schooling her features. Amusement, and something deeper, shined in her cerulean eyes.

"Forgive me, child. I'm afraid I wasn't expecting you to be quite this… spunky."

"You really shoulda done your homework, then," Imoen snorted.

"Indeed. May I… sit with you out here? Or would you feel more comfortable speaking somewhere else?"

"I never said I even _wanted_ to talk to you."

Imoen was nervous about this encounter. On the one hand, Melissan had done little to engender goodwill, and her timely appearances, coupled with her bleeding heart goal of helping the bhaalspawn, made her all kinds of suspicious. Not that Imoen didn't agree with the woman's mission, but she'd never met a person who didn't harbor at least some kinda hatred, disgust, or homicidal feelings towards bhaalspawn in general.

However, she found herself itching with curiosity. And the fact that Melissan appeared to know so little about her, made her feel as if she held most of the cards.

"That's true," Melissan conceded. "I can offer no reassurances that my purpose for being here is benign, at least none that you would find convincing just yet. I only ask that you hear me out, and you can take or leave what I have to say. You need only raise your voice and summon the wrath of your companions to bring down upon me should you feel threatened. I will not harm you, I came only to talk."

The sincerity in her voice, and the earnestness in her freckled face, eased some of the tension in Imoen's shoulders, even as she struggled to remain guarded. There was something about her that made Imoen _want_ to trust her.

"Alright… if you try any funny business, though, I'll Maze you. And by the time you find your way back here to this plane, you won't like what's waiting for you. Understand?"

"Perfectly."

Slowly, Melissan approached the rock and gingerly sat down, smoothing her traveler's robes beneath her, and looked up at Imoen while patting the space beside her.

Looking down into the woman's upturned face, the light dusting of freckles across her snub nose and cheeks, and the long auburn hair that she absently tucked behind her ears, Imoen found herself wondering how old she was. Older than herself, certainly, there were faint lines around her eyes, something she could only notice now that they were near each other. But how much older was impossible to tell in the moonlight.

Plopping back down on the boulder, she bent down to retrieve her pipe, never taking her eyes off the other mage.

"Uh, you want some?" She asked her, offering the herbs she had just relit.

"No, thank you," Melissan smiled. "I'm afraid that particular blend would leave me snoring here on this rock. Valerian root and lavender, right? There's another fragrance that I don't quite recognize, though."

"Blue lotus," Imoen supplied.

"Ah, yes. Might I ask why you're smoking all that?"

"No, you said you came here to talk, so talk."

 _Besides, she's a mage just like me, she should know what each of these herbs do. Or maybe she's just trying to be polite? Or test my knowledge?_

"Okay," Melissan exhaled, putting her hands on her knees, and pursing her lips. "Where to begin…"

"The beginning is usually a good place to, you know, begin."

Melissan cast her a sideways look, then huffed out a small laugh.

"I suppose you're right. Well, I'd like to start then with an apology for the map Balthazar gave to Ilyrana. When I asked him to give you all one that was up to date, I'm afraid I didn't take his paranoia seriously enough. He is, as I'm sure you'll understand, a very cautious individual."

"Cautious?" Imoen choked out, coughing as she drew her pipe away from her lips. "He's got a mercenary army camped out in his town, draining dry the locals he's supposed to be caring for! And then he sent some of said army after us and herded us into Abazigal's son's trap! Which, by the way, seems like an especially shitty thing to do for a monk, allying with a dragon like that."

"I'm afraid that's not _quite_ accurate. Balthazar sent those mercenaries after you mostly to spy, and to take out your group if you caused any trouble in the region. I'm afraid they, too, were cut down by the mercenaries belonging to Abazigal's son, Draconis. What few survived reported back what had happened, and once I'd heard, I set out to find you."

"Okay, but that still doesn't excuse the way he's been treating his own people. Also, why would that dragon's army kill Balthazar's? Aren't they on the same side?"

Melissan blinked at her.

 _Yeah, betcha didn't know we already figured out that Balthazar is one of us. Kinda hard to hide an aura like that, even for a monk._

"I see you've already deduced that Balthazar is your half-brother. As well as one of the Five?"

While that second part had been suspected, it was good to have it confirmed.

"Yep," was all Imoen replied, trying to maintain the illusion that she already knew more than she was letting on, but unable to resist smirking.

"Well, he is and _isn't_ part of the Five," Melissan sighed.

"Huh?" Now it was Imoen's turn to blink stupidly. "Whaddya mean 'is and isn't'?"

"Despite your initial impression of him, Balthazar is a good man. Before he joined the Five, he was as benevolent a ruler of Amkethran as any could be. Being a bhaalspawn, however, meant he would ultimately be forced to make some hard choices. The mercenary army at his disposal being one of them. While they may be unpalatable, they are necessary in providing a show of force, as well as protecting the town should one of his kin show up."

"Okaaaaay, but _why_ would another bhaalspawn attack him? I would think being the member of a prestigious murder club would be enough to discourage anyone from messing with him. Unless… they're there to protect him from the rest of the Five?"

"Yes. You see, Imoen… it was _I_ who formed the Five. And I recruited Balthazar for the very purpose of eventually destroying it."

" _What?!_ Okay, lady, you better explain yourself real quick. The Five are after Rana, so you sicced them on her, on _us,_ and you've been claiming to want to help the bhaalspawn. Manipulating us to kill each other isn't helping!"

"Please, let me explain. Bhaal sired scores of children, the exact number known only to him. Assuming he kept count, of course. Like most offspring, not all received the same genetic traits. While all are tainted, not all were born with the same _amount_ of taint. Some are barely bhaalspawn at all, like yourself. Others are very much demi-gods in their own right."

"Like Rana. And Sarevok. And the Five? Okay, makes sense… but explains nothing about what you're trying to pull."

"I do not believe that those who possess so miniscule an amount of their father's tainted essence should be held accountable for that which they had no say in being born into. Those who desire only to lead out normal lives. So many have died already, I do not think they _all_ should die, do you?"

"No, but the Prophecy-"

"Says only that 'chaos will be sown from their passing.' Nowhere does it say that every one of his mortal progeny has to die. There has been extensive studying and theorizing, but none of us know of the whole meaning behind it. Prophecies tend to be vague. I cannot sit idly by while innocent people are being persecuted for the simple fact that they, like us, did not get to choose who, or what, their father is."

"So… when you said you formed the Five and planned to destroy it in the end…"

"Illasera, Yaga-shura, Sendai, and Abazigal were all 'blessed' with considerably more power than the others. They are also irredeemably evil. By bringing them together, and telling them I plan to help them bring Bhaal back, so that they may gain his favor and become even more powerful, I was able to contain them for a time. While they sat around, mistrusting one another while gathering together their armies in preparation for Bhaal's return, I was able to get their weaker brethren out of the line of fire."

"Until you gathered hundreds of them up in Saradush to be slaughtered by Yaga-shura."

"What happened to Saradush will haunt me forever, Imoen," Melissan snapped, eyes glistening. "Understand, somewhere along the way I lost control of the Five. Their paranoia of one another, and impatience for their father's return, made them restless. I had hoped that Ilyrana, one whom I had heard great things of, could stop Yaga-shura, or at the very least bring Gromnir around to mount an offensive. I was wrong. Those bhaalspawn that I had tried to save by sending them to hide behind Saradush's walls… their blood is on my hands. I know this."

"You didn't mention Balthazar. Is he not also one of the stronger ones?" Imoen asked, changing the subject, as watching Melissan grapple with her guilt made her uncomfortable.

"He is. He has also been training as a monk of Selune his entire life. Unlike the rest of the Five, he has contained his evil, rather than revelling in it. He feels, as I do, that destroying the strongest of Bhaal's children will be enough to stop their father's return. To end this war. With far less casualties than if Bhaal returns to challenge Cyric for his throne."

"But _he_ is one of the strongest, too. Doesn't that mean…"

"Yes," Melissan sighed, closing her eyes for a moment before continuing, her sorrow making her seem even older. "He must die, too. He knows this. He is ready to do what must be done to save this world from testing itself apart."

Imoen wrapped her arms around her stomach, feeling suddenly very small.

And very ill as her mind took the next logical step.

"And… Rana?"

Melissan turned to look fully at her, her eyes soft.

"I heard the tales of Ilyrana of Candlekeep. How she stopped a war between Amn and Baldur's Gate by killing her half-brother, the mastermind behind it. How she saved the town of Tradesmeet. And Suldanessellar. And countless people. I've also heard that the woman who performed these amazing feats is not the same as she is today. I must ask you, child, does your sister wish to bring your father back? Or does she hope to follow in her brother's footsteps and attempt to ascend instead?"

"I… I don't know anymore," Imoen whispered. "She never wanted any of this. Only to do whatever she pleased, away from gods and the games they play. But… ever since Sarevok came back…"

"It is as I feared. Imoen, you must listen to me. It is not her fault. I've watched so many others struggle with the taint. Only Balthazar has been able to keep his in check. And for one as powerful as she, it is no surprise that she can't beat it."

"She was beating it! She was doing… well, not _great_ but certainly better than she is now! And it's all his fault! Sarevok. Something's going to be done about him, and when it is, I'm going to get her back. Help her fight this."

Melissan studied her long after her tirade faded.

"Imoen… even if you're right, even if Ilyrana can come back from all this, she still possesses a potent amount of the taint."

"So, what? She has to die? Is that what you're saying?! I should fry you for even-"

"Child, I do not expect you to choose between family and strangers. I do not ask that you choose the lives of thousands of innocents over the love you bear for your sister."

"Then what are you trying to say? You said the strongest have to die!"

"I also said that I do not think she can beat this," Melissan murmured. "Forgive me, child, but I think you will see that, as time goes on, Ilyrana cannot come back from the damage the taint has wrought in her. Even if she still clings to the desire for a normal life, and does not plan to try and take the throne for herself, there are those who will wish to use her. Many of Bhaal's followers are still loyal to him. Deathstalkers, they call themselves. If any of them get to her, and convince her that she can end this, without dying or ascending, by bringing Bhaal back… Imoen, if Bhaal returns, many of his former allies, other gods, will rally to him. It will spark yet another war, and it will make the bloodshed that _this_ war has brought about look mild in comparison."

It felt like someone was sucking the very air out of the night around her. Imoen took a deep breath, her heart thundering, her stomach in knots, the adrenaline now pumping through her veins seemed to burn the soothing calmness of her herbs away.

"Rana would never want to bring him back," she whispered to herself, her gorge rising as she realized how unsure she sounded.

"Sweetheart… she may think she has little choice," Melissan replied, laying a hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry, it was not my desire to upset you like this, but I wanted you to be prepared for what may lay ahead."

"Why? Why me?"

Melissan's hand drifted over her back, rubbing away some of the tension.

"I had thought that Ilyrana was the one to help put a stop to all this. Forgive me, I did not think about what her death would do to you… or the others that follow and care for her. My goal is to end this war as quickly as possible. To save as many lives as I can. I believe now that I was wrong. It is you, Imoen. You, who does not embrace the evil in your blood. Who, I think, wants this to end just as I do."

Imoen shrugged off the woman's hand and tightened her arms around her stomach.

"I think you should go."

Melissan stiffened beside her, but after a moment, she rose.

"Think on what I have told you. Think hard on how very different your sister is now compared to when she was in Candlekeep. Think of the innocents. I understand this is difficult. Believe me, I do understand. Take this. If you decide you want to help me, if Ilyrana does something that shows you I may be right, use its power and I will come to you. Until then… farewell, child."

Pressing a small talisman into Imoen's palm, Melissan turned and disappeared into the night.

Leaving Imoen alone with a helpless anguish that threatened to tear her apart.

 _Rana_

There was the sound of a heavy _thump,_ followed by Sarevok's voice, as Rana began to slowly peel her eyes open.

She felt weak, her muscles stiff, and just trying to roll onto her back from where she was laying on her side felt exhausting.

"She's awake! Oh, thank the gods!"

Chauntia. From somewhere nearby. Rana looked up at her as she struggled to sit up.

"Where…" coughing, her throat dry and her voice cracking, Rana struggled to speak. "Where am I?"

Chauntia's reply was lost as Rana noticed Sarevok kneeling beside her bed, looking down at something. Leaning over, she saw Winski asleep on the floor.

 _No… not asleep._

Memories of the dream, her last just before waking, assailed her. Stuck in the shadows with only Cyric's whispers. Her mother's whispers. Gorion's. Everyone she'd ever known.

Then another voice came, shouting from the darkness, loud and commanding, so that she couldn't discern who it belonged to at first, as it was so different from the last time she'd heard him. Before, it had been weak and raspy. In the dream he had sounded strong.

Winski Perorate.

" _Flee, Ilyrana! Follow the voice of your father! It's the only way to escape him!"_

But she hadn't been hearing her father? That is, not until Winski's voice summoned him. Booming like thunder instead a cavern, Bhaal roared his challenge. At first, she had thought he was challenging _her._ So she'd shrunk even further into herself, trying to escape him. Escape them both. Bhaal and Cyric.

It was only when Cyric turned his attention from her, shrieking out his answer to the challenge, did she understand. Running through the inky corridors of her mind, hands over her ears to block out the bellowings inside her head, emanating from all around her, she had no idea where she was going. She thought this would be the end. The agony of the volume of their voices would be her undoing, she was sure.

" _You're almost there! Keep going!"_ Winski had shouted, sounding as if he'd yelled the words directly into her ear in order to be heard.

So she continued to stumble through the darkness, heading towards her father's voice, certain that, at any moment, their screaming would rip her mind, her soul, apart.

When she felt like she could go no further, the rage blossomed. Enfolding her in familiar burning fury, she collapsed, savoring the sweetness of the feeling.

It had felt like she'd been drowning Cyric's illusions. In her dreams. Like she'd truly gone mad. Lying there, lost inside her head, but no longer alone with the Dark Sun, she breathed in the feel of her father's presence.

" **DO WHAT MUST BE DONE, MY DAUGHTER. BRING ME BACK. AND WE WILL END HIM."**

She didn't reply. She didn't know what to say; couldn't convey in a few sentences how she felt about any of this.

" _Ilyrana…"_

Winski's voice again. Weaker now, it sounded like it did before, when Sarevok took her to talk to him.

" _Ilyrana… tell Sarevok that I'm… proud of him."_

 _Tell him yourself,_ she'd thought irritably, as she'd slowly begun to waken, the outside world drawing her attention away from the battlefield inside her mind.

" _In my room… at the inn… I left books. And a letter. Bring your father back to life, Ilyrana. So that you, too, may finally live…"_

Gazing down now at Winski, she realized what he had done for her. He'd given his life to distract Cyric in order for her to escape, utilizing the ties to her father to connect them, just enough, for Bhaal to lash out against the one who had killed him. It had been a feeble strike, a wasp sting if that, but Cyric had responded immediately to his predecessor's presence.

She didn't know if the strain of bridging the gap between the Abyss and her mind was what had sealed Winski's fate. Or if Cyric had struck him down.

Sarevok finally looked up at her.

"He's dead," he said, voice devoid of emotion, as if he were telling her the time.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, her throat still scratchy. "He told me… to tell you that he was proud of you."

Sarevok's face didn't change, but the hand on Winski's arm tightened visibly.

"Are you alright?" He asked her after a moment.

She wondered how many times now he'd asked her that question after something _not alright_ had happened.

"Fine," she answered, both knowing it was a lie.

He nodded, then looked back down at his mentor.

His robes had come loose in the fall, revealing clammy gray skin and veins black as pitch. It was the same for his hands and forearms.

"Melissan cursed him," Sarevok rumbled. "He had but a few weeks left at best. I think he knew that this would kill him. And still he chose to burn himself out saving you rather than being consumed by his affliction."

She was still angry at Sarevok about before. About his wanting to bring Bhaal back so that he could have some kind of power. And she was angry that Winski had made that kind of sacrifice for her, even as she was grateful. But, in light of everything, Rana put that aside for now, and reached for him, weakly laying her hand on his arm. Without looking at her, he brushed his fingers over the top of her hand, barely enough to feel, then put his arms beneath Winski and rose, lifting the lifeless body as he went.

"I'll bury him. In the woods. Before someone comes in here and sees."

Without another word, Sarevok went to the door, and gently rapped it with his knuckles. Valygar opened it from the other side and immediately looked over at Rana, his eyes welling briefly when their gazes met. His relief at seeing her awake was palpable. He raised a hand, and she did the same, before he whispered something to Sarevok.

Rana watched him leave, with Winski's body clutched tightly in his arms.

Rook climbed into her lap as Chauntia sat down beside her. Absently stroking the kitten's gray fur, she stared blankly at the far wall, absorbed in thought.

Winski had been right. Cyric would never stop hunting her. Her and every other bhaalspawn. His place was threatened while any of them survived.

Keeping her locked inside her head, unable to call for help, he'd danced through her memories, lingering on his favorites, which happened to be Rana's most hated. He'd asked her to worship him again. Many times. And each time she declined, his hooks sank deeper, until her every previous thought and desire had been open to him.

She had been sure she was going to die like that. Wasting away in her bed, her body slowly starving to death, as her mind was picked apart like carrion.

Now, though…

Being forced to relive her guilt, her shame, her fears, her worst nightmares, as Cyric brought each one forth for commentary, had ignited something in her. Fueled by the feeling of being near her father, or his echo, or whatever that had been, and now the sacrifice Winski had made in trying to get her away from Cyric, she was ready.

 _Alright father, if you really think you can take him… then I'll bring you back._


	6. The Mayor

**Chapter 6: The Mayor**

 ** _Rana_**

"I can feel you staring at me," Rana sighed as she continued fletching arrows at her desk, her back to the door and the man standing there.

"Just making sure you're still alive."

"I've been in my room all night, with the door wide open, as you know because this the seventh time you've looked in on me. You're being a tad bit dramatic."

"I thought you were dead for good this time, Rana. I saw the area where you fought that barbarian. I saw the wounds you suffered from it. We couldn't wake you. Sarevok couldn't reach you. So get used to it."

Shaking her head, Rana set aside her arrows. Rising slowly to her feet, she turned around to look at her friend, her hand lightly grasping the back of the chair for support.

Even though she'd slept for two days straight, she felt as if she'd been fighting that entire time instead. Her legs were still a little wobbly, and she found herself spacing out for minutes at a time without realizing she was doing it. She knew this was only temporary, and she just needed to eat and take things easy for a day, which is why she'd allowed Valygar, Chauntia, and Mezoar to dose her up with food just after waking. And why she was upstairs making arrows, patiently waiting for the dawn and the rest of her companions to either wake or come back from watch.

"Do you wanna help me?"

Valygar straightened from where he'd been leaning against the doorframe and grabbed one of the spare chairs that had been used by those taking vigil while she'd slept. Setting it down next to hers, he wordlessly began picking up the crow feathers she preferred to use and cutting them in half, lengthwise. Rana sank back down in her chair and went back to notching the shafts.

They worked like this for a little while, neither saying a word, except for the occasional muttered oath when their hands slipped or their hair dropped in their eyes. It was a companionable silence at first, both content in having something to do and relishing the silence. Before long, though, Rana took notice of the tension slowly winding up in the set of his shoulders and the in way his breathing got huffier.

"Can I ask you something?" He asked after eventually throwing down his knife and resting his elbows on the desk to rub at his eyes.

"'Course," she replied, tossing the shaft she'd just finished notching aside and taking up another.

Reaching over, he plucked it out of her hands and set it down, half turning in his seat to face her.

"I want you to look at me when you answer."

Raising an eyebrow, she leaned back in her chair and tilted her head at him.

"Okay. You have my attention."

"Chauntia told me that just before Imoen barged into the room earlier this evening and called Sarevok out, he told her that the reason he couldn't reach you is because 'he's keeping me out'. Who is _'he',_ Rana?"

Rana sighed and slouched further in her chair, her knees hitting his.

This was a conversation that she'd been dreading to have. And as much as she wanted to lie, she was still waiting on the backlash from the others about her murdering Ara'stacia, the barbarian's mate, and lying about that. She couldn't say she'd learned her lesson, exactly, but she had entangled herself in a web of untruths so thoroughly that adding even more strands to it was unnecessarily stupid.

"Cyric."

"Cyric? The Dark Sun is responsible for you not waking up?"

"Yes."

Valygar studied her face for a moment then growled something beneath his breath that she didn't catch, but it sounded like a curse.

"How long has this been going on? Or was this the first contact you've had with him?"

"Since that visit to the temple."

"And why didn't you say anything?"

"Seriously? How do you think the others would react to me telling them that the reigning Lord of Murder has been speaking to me in my sleep? They already don't trust me anymore, you think they'd still follow me if they found that out?"

"I'm not talking about the others, Rana, I'm talking about me!" He snapped, startling her. "I am not the others. I don't abandon people over something they can't control. I won't abandon _you!_ I don't know how to help you against something like this, but damnit I definitely can't help if I don't even know what's going on!"

Rana folded her arms across her stomach and looked away.

"I thought you weren't coming back," he whispered. "You killed the Barbarian, so I had no one to take vengeance on, nothing to do but wait and hope, and feel absolutely helpless while doing so."

"And how would knowing that Cyric was responsible for keeping me unconscious have helped? What could you have done with that information?" She murmured, not looking at him because the anguish in his eyes made her feel uncomfortably ashamed for leaving him in the dark.

Reaching out, he ran a finger down a lock of her hair before smoothing it behind her ear, and surprised by the contact, she turned back to look at him.

"Nothing, obviously. I can't fight a god. But, dammit Rana, if he'd taken you, and I knew who to blame, it would have given me something to fight for. I have nothing if you're gone."

That last sentence was spoken so softly she almost missed it.

"Val…"

She'd never hugged him before. Rarely did she initiate any sort of physical affection with anyone other than Imoen, and Sarevok only recently. But she found herself leaning into him, and then sliding her arms around his waist when he pulled her closer.

He rested his chin on her head and sighed. She nuzzled her face against his chest and closed her eyes. Neither moved for a moment or two, content to hold and be held.

"So, you gonna start being a little more open with me?" He asked her quietly.

She pulled back just enough to look him in the face.

"Yes, you manipulative bastard," she sighed.

He gave her a small smirk and tousled her hair, which made her duck away and growl at him.

"Hey, you don't get to be grumpy that I guilt tripped you and then worked my charm on you to soften you up."

"Uh, why's that?"

"Because I said so."

Rana bared her teeth at him, but just before she could lay down her righteous hammer of elbow jabs, someone at the door cleared their throat. They turned to look, and saw Anomen glaring into the room, his eyes flashing with bitter fury.

"Busted," Valygar whispered, making Rana cough to hide a laugh.

"Sir Anomen?" She inquired.

"There's a dwarf here to see you, unless you'd like me to tell him you're too busy," he sneered, flicking a scathing glance at Valygar.

Rolling her eyes, and glancing out the window in surprise that the sun had risen without her realizing it, she got to her feet and grabbed her sword belt before buckling it around her hips. This was probably about her overdue meeting with the Mayor, but she wasn't about to go anywhere unarmed.

"I'm coming," she told the knight, and he jerked a nod and stormed off.

"He's really going to be in for a surprise when he learns that it's not me he should be jealous of," Valygar chuckled.

"Which could be any moment now," Rana replied sourly.

As she'd sat downstairs eating dinner, shortly after being pulled out of sleep, Imoen had walked through the front door, walked past the dining room, stopped, took a few steps back, and looked in to see Rana sitting at the table.

The sisters had stared at one another for a moment, and Rana pretended not to see Imoen's valiant effort to keep her emotions from showing on her face.

"You're awake."

"Yep."

"How?"

"Decided it was time to get up, I guess," Rana replied around a mouthful of potatoes. "Sorry if I worried you."

"Jaheira knows."

"Jaheira knows what?" Rana had asked, raising an eyebrow.

"About you and Sarevok. And you worshipping Mask. She went to talk to Keldorn."

Her food had suddenly turned into a cold, hard lump in her stomach. Keldorn already knew about her and Sarevok, somewhat, but news of her following the god of shadows would be alarming to him. Nevermind the kind of fallout she expected from Jaheira.

"I see," was all she replied.

"So are you gonna tell Jaheira that I'm responsible for Khalid's mutilation and death? You said you would if I let your little secret slip."

"No, I won't tell her."

Imoen's surprise shone through the mask she had been trying to maintain.

"Why?"

"Because I'm not in a petty kind of mood. I'll deal with what you set in motion, sis. Thank you for warning me."

Her sister had opened her mouth to respond, then shut it and looked down at something she held in her hand. When Imoen looked back up at her, she looked a little sad. And resolved. Without another word, she'd left and gone up to her room.

"What are you going to do when they find out?" Valygar's voice gently pulled Rana back to the present.

"Nothing. The question isn't what _I'm_ gonna do. It's what are _they_ gonna do."

"And if they leave? Or demand Sarevok's removal from this party?"

"Where will they go, Val? We're well into Autumn, and it's a cold one, early snows will be filling up mountain passes any day now. Armies are gathering and moving, it's dangerous to try and go it alone. They'll see that. They can bitch and moan, they can scream about the fact that he's my brother, and they can rant about my lying to them about some things. At the end of the day, though, they're stuck with me. And the sooner this war ends, the sooner they can leave."

Valygar said nothing, just watched her throw her cloak on to keep the chill out, and ensure her knives were in their proper places.

"And if things turn violent?" He eventually asked.

Rana turned around to look at him.

"You said you have nothing if I'm gone. If that's really the case, Val, and I don't think it is by the way, then I hope you'll help me if things go south."

Going downstairs, and keeping her hand on the railing to ensure she didn't tumble down them since her legs were still a little shaky, she noted the sounds of Mezoar bustling around the kitchen and Chauntia setting the table.

"Rana? Are you hungry? Breakfast is ready."

"I'm late for an appointment, I'll eat when I get back."

Chauntia peeked around the dining room doorway at her, then put her hand on her hip.

"Do I need to request backup from Valygar to get you to eat? You need your strength."

Rana huffed, trying to look annoyed, but her amusement leaked through.

"You'd like that wouldn't you, Chauntia? Glad to see you've mustered up the courage to talk to him finally, though."

Chauntia glanced away, trying to hide a smile.

"It seems we have a mutual interest, worrying about you."

"Relationships have been built on far weaker foundations than that," Rana grinned. "I'll eat when I get back, I promise."

Rana opened the front door before Chauntia could argue further, and stopped short as the dwarf from the temple stood just outside, scowling around a smoking pipe in his mouth.

"Ach, there ye are. Was beginning ta think yon pompous human didnae tell ye I was here."

"Sorry to have missed the meeting with the Mayor the other day, I was-"

"Doona care what yer excuse is. I'm sure it's a good one, now come on, I don't have all blasted day. Wait, where's the tall one ye was with before?"

"Um, Sarevok? He's-"

"Mayor insists he comes, too. Go fetch him, elf, and we can be on our way."

 _Fetch?_

Taking a deep breath to keep from snapping at the insolent dwarf, Rana tried to compose herself just enough to explain that Sarevok wouldn't be coming. He'd left to bury Winski hours ago and when he returned he went straight into his room, without a word to anyone. She also didn't want to see him again right now.

Too much had happened too fast for her to think about.

 _Story of my life._

She'd told him she was done with him because of his desire to bring their father back. Because it was yet another obvious grab for power. But she'd decided to commit to bringing him back, anyway. That didn't negate the original reason she felt betrayed. Nor did it necessarily mean she was still angry about it. Between her sister, Sarevok, Winski's unexpected sacrifice, the incoming confrontation with her companions, Cyric, Bhaal… Rana was officially tapped out emotionally.

"Look, he's not here, so either you take me to the Mayor right now or we call this meeting off. I'm not-"

"Let's go."

Rana jumped and whirled around to see Sarevok coming down the stairs, throwing his sheathed sword across his back, looking tired but recently bathed.

"Good," the dwarf nodded, and spun on his heel to begin marching towards town.

Rana followed the dwarf and Sarevok followed her. About three seconds after they'd left her house behind, the dwarf began rambling on about the repairs being made to the town after the drow raid. About the mines needing to be reopened _\- like that'll ever happen, what with the fact they're likely crawling with drow_ \- and the influx of refugees and mercenary parties.

"I never did tell ye me name, did I? Grim Grumbler. I'd say it's nice te see ye again but that would be a lie. Don't much care for the company of elves and other tall folk. At least yer quiet this time. Can't abide all the yapping yer type usually does."

Rana gritted her teeth and fantasized about stuffing Grim's beard in his own mouth to shut him up. After a few moments, her temper under control, she realized how unusually quiet Sarevok was being. When she glanced back at him, he was scanning their surroundings. Feeling her eyes on him, he looked at her, eyebrow raised in question. She slowed her steps until they were walking side by the side, the dwarf still talking just ahead of them.

Though she didn't entirely feel up to it, she knew she needed to say something.

"I'm sorry about Winski."

"No, you're not," he replied, and she glanced sharply up at him in confusion. "You said you would kill him if you saw him again. And you kept your word."

"I didn't kill him!" Rana hissed, surprised by the accusation. "I didn't ask him to do what he did! I didn't want that kind of sacrifice!"

"And yet he gave it. I lost you in an effort to seek our father's aid, and yes, his power as well, during and after this war. And then I lost Winski, right after finding out he was alive, when he gave his life to save you from Cyric. I should be used to losing by now."

His words made her chest ache and her throat burn. This wasn't at all what she had been expecting.

"You didn't lose me…"

The words were out before she'd even thought them through, but a panic had begun to set in the moment he spoke of losing her.

"Did I not? You told me you were done, Rana. I could sense, from the moment I told you of my former mentor's return, you withdrawing from me. You were afraid of the possibilities that could come from our reunion. That I would be seduced by a renewed chance for power. You needed only the meeting with Winski to confirm it."

"Was I wrong?"

"Yes and no. I won't deny that the thought of having our father's favor is appealing to me. But my immediate concern was _you._ If Bhaal can help us fight Cyric, and keep him from meddling with your mind, then that alone would have been enough to convince me of returning him."

"You've been power hungry all your life. Forgive me for getting my hopes up that you'd finally let that go. And not immediately believing that you wanting Bhaal's favor was predominantly for _my_ benefit and not your own."

"Tell me, Rana, what do you think sparked my lust for power? What was my motivation in the very beginning? Who was it that I longed to protect? When we were children, _why_ did I desire to be stronger than those around me?"

Rana withdrew the dagger from her boot and began to spin it between her fingers, not looking at him.

She hadn't ever considered that his power hungry nature had stemmed from her. From their childhood. She should have. It was all there, laid out before her, and it was blindingly obvious.

"Imoen told Jaheira about us," she found herself saying, wanting to change the subject.

"Did she? A pity that knowledge is useless now."

His dismissive response felt like a knife in the gut. She'd meant her words, about being done with him. Or rather, she'd meant them _at the time._ She'd also been expecting him to fight her on it, to see straight through her anger and fear like he always did. That he let her go so easily, right when everything else was about to crash down around her, only magnified that panicked feeling.

Seducing her hadn't been easy, she liked to think, and their bond wasn't like others', so for him to just bluntly remind her that they were through… it stung. More than that, it ushered the return of the loneliness that had slowly been consuming her these past few years.

"Or did you speak in haste?" He drawled, and even though she stared straight ahead, she could feel his gaze boring into her. "Was that your anger talking when you said that? You speak of what you consider to be my flaws as if you don't have your fair share of them, as well. You sounded sincere when you told me you were done. And now you bring up the fact that your friends are about to find out the truth. Afraid to be judged for something you yourself ended? Does the thought of standing before them, without me at your side, make you uncomfortable? Tell me, little one, was I worth it?"

Her knife spun faster in her hand. The words were there on her tongue, but her lips refused to move. Her pride keeping them shut.

"I see," he rumbled. "Perhaps when the rest find out, you can convince them you had a moment, or _several_ moments, of weakness. And that sharing my bed is no longer a concern. It should come as a comfort, though, that you are left with far more than I am, as is the usual. You'll have your sister back, at least."

"And if I told you it _was_ in anger?" She blurted out, forcing the words out around the lump in her throat and the burning pit of guilt in her stomach. "That I don't mean it now? And that… that maybe I've come to the conclusion that bringing Bhaal back is the wisest thing to do?"

Sarevok stopped walking. She stopped, too, and turned to look at him.

"Then Winski's death _was_ in vain. Had your faith in me been stronger, you wouldn't have pounced on the idea that I craved power more than I crave you. You wouldn't have stormed off, like a spoiled child, and gotten yourself ambushed and nearly killed. You wouldn't have been made vulnerable to Cyric, forcing Winski to kill himself just to wake you up."

Rana swallowed and crossed her arms over her stomach, hating that he was right.

 _You poison everything around you and everything you touch._

Imoen's words just before she'd left for that temple. Each day that passed was proof of how right she'd been. The idea that she had somehow managed to taint Sarevok, as well, would have been laughable if the implications didn't twist her up inside.

"You said he was already dying, that Melissan had cursed him."

"So it's best he died saving you rather than wasting away? Do you think yourself so important that his sacrifice was justified?"

"I didn't say that-"

"Enough of this," he snapped, and pushed past her to continue following the dwarf. "Speak no more of Winski to me, Rana, I'm warning you."

Rana stared after him a moment, completely at a loss for words, her chest aching. Blinking away a sudden stinging in her eyes, she noticed a familiar figure disappearing into the Sawtooth Inn.

 _The Hell is Anomen doing? Sun's barely up and he's already drinking?_

Just thinking about alcohol made her crave it. So much so that she forgot about Winski telling her he had left books, and a letter, back in his room there at the inn.

Resisting the urge to join the knight in chasing oblivion, she forced herself to follow Sarevok and the dwarf, promising herself to remedy her sobriety as soon as they went home.

"Not much further," Grim growled back at them, leading them down a small side road and toward the rocky face of the mountain that the town was built up against.

Rana tried to turn her attention to the meeting with the mysterious Mayor of Tor Niedrig. He could possibly be of some help, and she needed to keep her wits about her just in case he turned out to be a problem.

But, try as she might, she couldn't shake loose the knife now lodged in her heart. She'd come to rely on Sarevok's presence at her side, not just as a fighter, but as a confidante. So for him to be so near, without feeling him lightly touching his half of their soul to hers, or reaching out to touch her physically in some small way, made the tendrils of that yawning loneliness tighten their grip around her.

 _I've driven away Imoen in favor of Sarevok. And now Sarevok in favor of my disappointment that he never truly gave up his hunt for power. A hunt that I now share, if only for Bhaal's help in the fight against Cyric. A hunt that began with me when I relied on him to keep me safe all those years ago._

 _I've fucked up literally everything in my life. And have almost nothing to show for it._

She remembered one of the dreams Cyric had shown her. Standing alone on the edge of the surf, a crimson tide rolling in to engulf her. He hadn't spoken when he showed her that. He didn't need to. The meaning was clear. Especially now.

"Here we are," the dwarf announced, stopping in front of a stone house carved right into the side of the mountain.

She'd seen all kinds of nobles' homes during her adventures. Each one was bigger, tackier, more excessive than the last.

This one looked like the entrance to a mine. Rough and crude. With almost zero ornamentation, save for a statue of Clangeddin right outside the simple front door. The marble figure was in full battle attire, with two axes crossed over his chest. It looked as if all the personal funds that the Mayor saved up had been spent on it rather than his house.

Rana's curiosity over the identity of the Mayor was finally peaked.

Grim opened the door and led them into a small, modestly furnished sitting room. A pair of double doors lay across from them.

"Now, once ye lay down all yer weapons on this table, I can go in and tell him ye've finally decided ter show up."

Rana and Sarevok exchanged a look.

"Yeah, that's not gonna happen," she said, folding her arms across her chest.

"Well, then I guess ye made the trip fer nothing. I'm not lettin' ye in there packing so much steel."

Sarevok turned and headed right back for the front door, Rana right on his heels.

A voice could be heard from the other side of the double doors, speaking in dwarvish.

"All right, fine, he says ye can keep yer shoddy weapons, the trusting old fool. Go in, then. If ye try anything funny, though, I'll be in there quick as ye blink to obliterate yer kneecaps, ye understand?"

Grim spat on the ground and swung the double doors open before stepping aside, grumbling to himself.

All thoughts of the dour dwarf and her relationship problems dwindled as she saw who sat behind the Mayor's desk.

"Yeslick Orothiar."

 ** _Jaheira_**

After speaking with Keldorn yesterday evening, Jaheira had scouted around the outskirts of town, too troubled to return to the house and sleep. She found that using her wolf form helped her a little, its instincts demanding she be present in the moment, not consumed with her thoughts and the future.

While she had told Keldorn everything that Imoen had told her of Rana's involvement with Sarevok, and her choice of god to worship, Keldorn had evinced little reaction. When she was done, he quietly told her he'd gather the others and talk to them.

That was it.

It unsettled her, because it meant he may have already known about some of it.

When dawn had risen, she could put off the inevitable no longer, and had returned to the town proper, weary and disheveled from the transformations. There, Haer'Dalis found her and informed her that Rana had woken sometime in the night, and that she was now on her way to meet the Mayor. And that Keldorn had called a meeting while she, and Sarevok, were out of the house, which she had already known was coming.

Sending the bard away with her word that she would be back soon, she'd ambled around town for a while, reluctant to leave just yet; possessed with a strange desire to linger, just a little longer, before rejoining the others.

She'd come to trust these intuitous little tugs over the long years of her life, attributing it to her hard earned experience, as well as the mysterious workings that surrounded the lives of those who Harp.

"Ho there, Jaheira. Fancy seeing you here."

The druid turned toward the stone bridge that spanned a small river running through part of the town. There, sitting atop the low wall that bordered it, was Elminster.

"Elminster? What are you doing here? Nevermind, that is a foolish question."

The old man's eyes twinkled as he smiled kindly at her. Patting the stone beside him, he tilted his hat back to better look at her as she took a seat.

"As much as I do not wish to bear witness to what I suspect will happen here, I'm afraid I must. Do you have the time to tarry awhile with an old friend?"

"Of course. But what do you mean? What is going to happen?"

"Fate! Destiny!" Elminster exclaimed, raising his arms to the sky for emphasis, his staff propped against the stone between his robes. "We sit on the sidelines of history, and you, my friend, have a front row seat."

"I'm afraid I'm in the thick of things, Elminster, not just a casual observer. Though I certainly feel that way at times."

"Yes, one can often feel left behind when surrounded by the vivacity of the young. However, you are indeed correct about being directly involved. Which is why I have come here to aid you."

"Gods know I could use all the help I can get. What is it you're offering?"

"Answers."

Jaheira's heart skipped a beat.

"Answers to what?"

"Questions," Elminster replied with a patient smile. "Ask them and I shall try my best to satisfy your curiosity."

Jaheira took a deep breath.

 _Where to start?_

The thought that had taken root in her mind during her vigil over Rana began to bloom.

"Is it true?" She whispered. "Did Gorion really join one of the splinter cells and hunt down bhaalspawn younglings? Did he really wipe away Rana and Sarevok's memories of their time there and of each other?"

"Yes," Elminster replied gently.

"Then… how? He was a Harper in good standing until his dying day. Why did I never hear of this before? Why was he not exiled?"

"Because it was I who sent him."

Jaheira shot to her feet, looking at her old friend in horror.

"You?! How could-"

"Sit back down, Jaheira, and allow me to explain," he shushed her, patting the spot she had just vacated.

Reluctantly, she did so.

"The Time of Troubles was a bleak point in our history, as you well remember. When the schism formed, it interrupted the aid we could provide those caught in the crossfire between warring gods. And pulled away our numbers from helping those gods that we wished to keep safe. During all of this, Gorion heard a rumour of Alianna. He was set on finding her. On saving her. So I instructed him to join the dissenters. As an informant for the Harpers on the traitor's whereabouts and activities. I told him to do what he could to save the children without giving himself away, and that in doing so, he would find his lost lover."

The knot in her belly that had been tightening since Rana told her story of her childhood began to finally loosen.

"So he was your mole. He wasn't a traitor _or_ a child killer."

"Correct."

"But… the memory spell…"

"Yes," Elminster sighed, suddenly looking weary. "None of us are perfect, old friend. I can tell you that he regretted his actions that fateful day. Not the outcome, so much, because he had managed to rescue Ilyrana and bring her to safety. But he hated himself for what he did to young Sarevok."

"He shouldn't have," Jaheira hissed. "If he'd known the monster that child would become…"

"A monster he himself helped create. He knew, Jaheira, what he did to him. He saw what he had become, and that he'd had a hand in it. It is why, I think, that he could not kill him. Sarevok was the reckoning for Gorion's mistake. And he chose to pay for his sins with his death, in a final act of love for Ilyrana. Protecting her with his life."

Jaheira was quiet for a long time.

"A sacrifice she no longer deserves," she finally breathed.

Elminster looked at her and gave her a kind, understanding smile. For some reason, she felt tears begin to form because of that look.

"Do not abandon hope just yet," he told her. "Dark times still lie ahead of you. Choices that will shape the outcome of this war, and the realm itself long after it is over. You will need all of that courage, and fortitude, to endure what is to come."

"And what is to come, Elminster? Tell me what I should do! Rana has fallen so far from the balance that I fear she is beyond saving."

"I cannot tell you what to do. And even if I could I would not. I trust you to know what paths to follow when they are laid before you."

"Then tell me if I'm wrong about her. Tell me how I can still fight beside her when she does things that go against everything I am, everything I believe. Tell me how I can save her from all of this, if that's even possible anymore."

"Jaheira, you cannot save someone if they do not wish to be saved. Only they can do that. Only _she_ can do that."

"Then you will not help me? My heart is lighter for what you told me of Gorion, but I am just as lost as I was before you showed up."

Elminster stood, clutching his staff as he leaned down to peer directly into her eyes.

"You have never been lost, my friend. Even when the darkness closes in, and you can see nothing around you, you can still feel the path beneath your feet. I will tell you this: When the time comes, do not look back. Not at what you have lost. Nor what you have done. Look to the horizon, and you will see the road you must take to get there. Do not despair of what you must leave behind to get there. Your losses will not be in vain, thought it may feel that way at the time. Protect those who deserve your protection. Cast aside those who do not. Only then can you save that which truly needs saving."

Jaheira didn't know whether she should should embrace him. Or strangle him.

"Oh, I almost forgot," Elminster clucked, reaching into his robes and withdrawing a rolled up scroll. "Give this to Ilyrana. It is the letter Gorion sent to me after Sarevok visited Candlekeep, when he realized who he was and that he had somehow survived all those years ago. It may help. Or it may be too little too late. The choice is hers."

And with that, Elminster left.

Jaheira looked down at the parchment in her hands, turning it over and running her fingers across the faded material.

Rising from her seat, she headed for the house, the scroll tucked away in her pouch, and Elminster's words swirling around inside her head.

 _What would Khalid do?_ She found herself wondering.

The answer brought both comfort and sorrow.

 ** _Rana_**

The second the doors shut behind them, the old dwarf dropped out of his chair and walked around the desk to stand before Rana, peering into her face with his hands on his hips.

"Hmm I see the years have been unkind te you, as well, elfling. Got a lot more scars te boast of, don't ye? Ye know, not a day has gone by that I haven't asked Clangeddin to keep an eye on ya. You're still alive, so I'll thank him fer that."

"It's nice to know _someone_ up there actually cares," Rana drawled with amusement. "How did you end up here? And as Mayor no less."

"Needed a change o' scenery after Baldur's Gate," the dwarf replied with a dismissive wave of his hand before turning to face Sarevok. "I know yer not really his son, but ye got his look. I'd recognize Rieltar's cunning anywhere, he's there alright, in yer eyes."

"Make another comparison like that, dwarf, and I'll rend you in two."

"Hmph, well ye did not get his knack fer diplomacy. Let me take a look at my sword."

" _Your_ sword?! It is-"

"Aye _my_ sword, ye ill-tempered oaf, I forged the thing, now hand it over. I'd like te see how it's grown."

"Just give it to him," Rana sighed, leaning a hip against the desk and folding her arms to watch the exchange.

Glaring at her, then directing that glare at the dwarf, Sarevok unsheathed the Sword of Chaos. Yeslick snatched it from him, holding the flat of the blade under one hand and the handle with the other, and ignoring the ensuing growl of irritation from the warrior.

"Well-sharpened… nicely oiled… I see ye've augmented its weight a bit in the hilt. Appropriate, I suppose, seeing as how ye've the muscle te wield it. Now, I'm not looking forward te this part, but let's take a look at its soul…"

"It's a sword, you old fool. It hasn't got a soul."

"And yer an hornery sack o' flesh and bones, yet ye've still got a soul. At least I assume ye do, anyway. Now hush so I can listen."

Rana hid her amusement at Sarevok's indignant expression. Trust Yeslick to completely throw him off of his feet.

"About what I expected," Yeslick sighed, lightly caressing the steel. "Though… its purpose has not been perverted. I suppose that's my doing."

"What are you talking about?"

"I crafted this sword because I'd hoped it would help bring an end te Rieltar. I wasn't told that his son would be the one wielding it, I learned that after the fact. I was in a dark place when Perorate approached me te make it. Both literally and figuratively. With each stroke of me hammer, I envisioned it cutting down my former friend. For what he did te me and my ancestral home. I wanted justice, aye, but it wasn't justice that kept me alive while I slaved away fer my captor. It was vengeance. Much of the blood that this sword has spilled was done fer the same reason. Much, but not all."

Yeslick handed the sword back to him and turned around, sitting back down at his desk, his face heavy with the haunted look of painful memories.

"Before we continue, I'd like te thank ye fer aiding us against the drow. And fer rescuing those kids and my assistant, Grim, from that temple. As well as taking care o' them cultists. I owe ye one, elfling. Anchev… I'd say that makes us even."

"Even? I did nothing to you, dwarf, to warrant a debt of any kind."

"Did ye not? Ye helped yer father run the mines, me home. Ye used that ore te fuel yer war. I made ye the finest weapon ye ever laid yer eyes on. I'd say there was a debt needing paid. It's settled, be happy I don't ask fer the sword back te smelt it down."

 _He got you there,_ Rana thought to herself.

"I don't care if you're the Mayor of this backwater town _or_ if you forged my sword-"

"I do," Rana interrupted. "So shut up and let him talk."

"Thank you. Now, where was I? Ah, yes, on te business."

Sheathing his sword, Sarevok turned the full force of his ire on Rana. She looked back at him, her face giving away nothing, before deliberately turning her attention back to Yeslick, dismissing him.

She wanted this meeting over with quickly. She wanted to get away from Sarevok even quicker. As nice as it was to see her old friend again, all she wanted to do was drown herself in Berduskan Dark while she licked her wounds.

"I know there's drow holed up somewhere in the mines o' this town. And that they'll be back eventually te finish this place off. How much do ye know of why they suddenly decided te chance the surface?"

That question threw salt on the cuts festering on her heart.

"It's my fault," she admitted softly. "They're being led by another bhaalspawn. One of three remaining that possesses more power than the rest of my kin."

"So they were trying te get te you?"

"Yes. We wouldn't have stayed here if we'd known Sendai, the drow bhaalspawn, was so close. We had been led to believe her stronghold was somewhere in these mountains, but not here, not right next to this town."

"I'm not blaming ye fer what happened, Rana. Them drow are a nasty lot, they would have attacked us eventually. What I'm worried about now is when they'll strike again. And if there be some way o' stopping it from happening at all."

"We stop it by killing Sendai and wiping out the ones who follow her. We know there's a hidden passage in the mines that leads to her den. I was waiting on reinforcements before striking, and once they arrived I had some… things happen that delayed us from going. We're ready now, though, and can move on Sendai as early as tonight."

"Best wait till morning, no? In case we need te make a quick retreat. They won't follow us out o' their dark badger hole and into the sun."

"We?"

"Aye _we._ Ye think I'm just goona sit back while there's drow to be hunted? They killed my people, this is as much my fight as it is yer's."

"I won't turn away any help, but we have no way of knowing how many of them are down there. Or what they've got in the way of allies."

"Lucky fer you I've got a town full o' mercenaries looking fer work. I've already hired on some te bolster the guard. I can recruit some more te take with us."

Rana felt relief over a problem she hadn't even allowed herself to worry over yet. She loathed the underground with a passion. And knew fighting another one of the Five, in her own domain no less, would be fraught with danger. More bodies would definitely come in handy.

"That would be a tremendous help, Yeslick, thank you."

"No need fer thanks, Rana. I consider it no favor on my part fer sending that pack o' devils back te the Abyss. If you and yers are up te it, I'd say the sooner we get started the better."

"Tomorrow morning, at dawn then. Gather up those mercenaries and meet us at the entrance to the mines."

"Aye, will do," Yeslick confirmed, then turned a thoughtful gaze on Sarevok. "Tell me something, Sarevok. What do ye plan te do with this new life that's been bestowed upon ye? I will not ask how yer alive. I don't much care. What matters te me is what ye do now."

Rana inwardly cursed, not at all wanting to listen to whatever vitriol Sarevok would snarl at the elder dwarf.

"Whatever my plans are, they are none of your business. Are we done here?"

"Aye, tis true enough," Yeslick replied, ignoring the question. "However, ye carry my sword. I poured not only my sweat and blood into forgin' that thing, but also my hope. I don't expect one as young as ye te appreciate something like hope, at least not when that's all ye've been left with. But that sword bears a part o' me with it. My blood and yours."

"Your point, dwarf."

"My point is, if ye intend te keep using it in service te Rana, killin' her foes and takin' vengeance on those who've wronged ye, then I can do a little upgrading te it."

Rana's eyebrows went up in surprise. Sarevok's expression remained carefully neutral. Which meant he was likely intrigued. Gods forbid he show it.

"Why?" He asked.

"Why? A master blacksmith offers te make the weapon he forged ye even stronger and ye ask 'why'? I was under the impression ye were intelligent."

Rana coughed to hide her snigger. The sharp glare directed at her from Sarevok told her she wasn't successful.

"What price is there?"

"No price. Only yer word that ye'll not use the sword te kill anyone who's not deservin' death."

Sarevok snorted.

"And you would just trust that I mean it? You can't be that naive."

Yeslick studied him for a long moment before looking at Rana. She hiked a shoulder and looked down to study her nail beds, suddenly incredibly uncomfortable by the dwarf's scrutiny.

"Aye," he finally said. "I would trust yer word."

Without looking at either of them, Rana's eyes widened at this strange turn of events, feeling weirdly like her presence had become intrusive somehow.

Did Sarevok truly understand what Yeslick was offering? Did he have _any_ idea how profound an offer of trust from Yeslick was? To extend this kind of olive branch, to Rieltar's adopted son, after everything that man did to the dwarf…

 _There's something perversely wrong with the male gender,_ she concluded.

Noticing how loud the silence was becoming, Rana glanced up from her nails to see if Sarevok was even still there. He was, trying his hardest not to let any of his thoughts show on his face.

 _So, so wrong._

She cleared her throat and continued to pretend that her hands were the most fascinating thing in the room.

 _Say something you idiot!_ She wanted to scream at him.

"Alright, dwarf. My word that I won't harm the innocent while I wield this blade."

 _That's not what he asked._

"No, yer word that ye'll not harm anyone not deservin' it. Ye and me both know that no one is truly innocent."

Rana let her hair fall across her face to hide her smirk.

 _Clever Yeslick._

"Semantics," Sarevok growled, clearly annoyed his little trick didn't work. "Fine, I'll not kill anyone who does not deserve it. Satisfied?"

"Aye, that'll do. Obviously I ain't got the time te work on it now, but once we've settled up with the drow, I'll get te tinkerin' on it."

"Fine. Are we finished?"

"I need a word with Yeslick," Rana responded, straightening up. "Alone."

Sarevok looked at her, eyes narrowed. She had no idea why he would fight her on this. And he must not have been able to come up with a good enough excuse, because he eventually turned and left without a word.

Yeslick slouched back in his chair and gave her a tired smile.

"What else is on yer mind, elfling? Or are ye going te berate me fer what just happened?"

"No. And while I have zero idea why you did that, I'm not going to even ask. I trust you to know what you're doing. I wanted to ask how the children are."

"I see. And is there a reason why ye did not want te ask while he was in the room?"

"I'm hoping he goes back to the house so I can walk back by myself. Just buying myself some time."

Yeslick chuckled.

"Can't say I blame ye. Well, I've got the little one settled in at the temple o' Helm. The ones that ain't been claimed, anyway. Some baths and a few good hot meals have certainly helped them, but I fear it'll take much more than that fer them te get over what they saw at that temple."

Rana nodded, needing no more explanation. Reaching into her pouch, she withdrew a sack of gold coins and plunked it on the desk.

"Give that to the Helmites, would you? For the children's care. And let me know if they need more."

Yeslick looked at the gold before reaching out to pick it up.

"Quit heavy. This is an awfully generous offering, Rana."

"Oh, it's not from me, exactly," Rana grinned and began to head for the door. "I'll see you in the morning, Yeslick."

"Wait! Who's it from then?"

"Filched it off Sarevok on the way over here. See you!"


	7. Mutiny

**Chapter 7: Mutiny**

 ** _Imoen_**

"Where is Anomen?" Keldorn asked as Chauntia shut the doors in the dining room and moved to stand beside the serving table.

"He told Rana about the dwarf who came to escort her to the Mayor, but I haven't seen him since," Valygar replied from his seat at the dining table.

"Is he on watch?" Kivan asked.

"No, Haer'dalis is."

"Rana and Sarevok aren't here either," Valygar observed. "You made sure to have this little meeting while they're with the Mayor. Isn't that right?"

Imoen glared at the ranger. She hadn't wanted him, or Viconia, involved in this meeting at all, but Keldorn insisted that not involving them wasn't an option.

"Yes, that's true, Valygar. I wanted to speak with everyone before speaking to the two of them."

"Before we begin," Jaheira interrupted. "Chauntia, would you excuse yourself, please? We can manage our wine on our own right now."

Chauntia stiffened, and looked between Jaheira and Keldorn, perhaps hoping the paladin would allow her to stay.

"Why does her presence here bother you, Jaheira?" Valygar asked.

"She is a servant, not a member of this group."

"She is a member of this household, like the rest of us, _including_ Rana and-"

"It's alright," Chauntia spoke over Valygar, cutting him off. "I don't mind. Should anyone need anything, I'll be in the kitchen."

Imoen watched the girl leave, and glanced at Jaheira, wondering if the druid was right about how close she and Rana had become.

 _Gee, no wonder she doesn't need me anymore. Not when she's got Sarevok, and Chauntia, and Valygar, and Viconia, and…_

"I'd like to make it known," Safana drawled, "that _I_ don't care if the servant stays. I don't want my food tampered with because Jaheira is feeling catty."

"Hold your tongue, harlot!"

"Harlot, am I? Careful dearest, your age is showing," Safana purred back.

" _Alright,"_ Keldorn cut in before a fight could break out. "I don't want to take up too much time here, so I need you all to listen."

Imoen took a deep breath, steeling herself for what she'd put into motion.

 _No, what Rana put into motion. I'm just dealing with the aftermath._

"As you all know by now, Rana awoke from unconsciousness last night. She, and Sarevok, are currently meeting with the Mayor. I've called you all together to discuss the crime she admitted to after she was attacked by another bhaalspawn. As well as another thing I've recently learned of."

She felt a moment of frustration that _this_ was the first item on the agenda. While killing another bhaalspawn without provocation was bad, sleeping with the enemy was far, far worse in Imoen's mind.

"Rana's admission to killing that other bhaalspawn was meant for Sarevok and myself _only,"_ Valygar immediately growled. "It wasn't anyone's place to reveal that."

"You think murder should be kept private?" Jaheira snapped. "It doesn't matter that she hadn't meant for anyone else to overhear that. What _does_ matter, however, is that you take offense to us knowing! You would have kept that secret? What _else_ do you know, Valygar?"

"What Rana says to me in confidence is _kept_ in confidence, Jaheira," Valygar spoke softly, staring the druid down before flicking a scathing look at Aerie, then Imoen. "I keep the secrets she asks me to keep, I will not apologize for upholding my end of a friendship."

"While I don't like the turmoil this has caused," Aerie interjected, "I will not apologize either for telling the group what I heard her say when she showed up on death's door, so to speak."

"Nor should you have to," Imoen hissed. "Had you not been nearby that night, and overheard what Rana said about killing that bhaalspawn and orphaning her kids by also killing the father, we would have never known."

"Are you going to also hold Rana accountable for killing that barbarian?" Valygar demanded. "Which she did _in self-defense!"_

"Or so she claims," Kivan replied. "For all we know, she sought him out as she did his mate."

"You suggest that she's lying, male?" Viconia asked archly. "Who are you to question her word?"

"She already lied about killing that woman in the first place. Trust a liar to defend a liar. As if murder matters to a creature like you, drow."

"You're right, it doesn't matter. Remember that next time you sleep, Kivan."

"Why wait until I'm asleep, coward? I have no qualms about putting you down right now."

Viconia stood up from her chair, and Kivan straightened from where he was leaning against the wall.

"Stop it, both of you!" Keldorn cried, slamming his fist on the table. "Or I'll kick you both out of this meeting!"

"Oh no, please don't expel me from this mutinous little soiree," Viconia sneered mockingly. "Where I defend our leader who's being questioned and persecuted behind her back. And you call _me_ a coward. This reeks of drow behavior. Worry not, paladin, I'll show myself out."

Viconia slammed the door behind her as she left.

"You know she's likely on her way to tell Rana," Jaheira said.

"You really are a fool if you think this was going to stay quiet," Safana chuckled, using her knife to dig dirt out from under her nails.

"If I've given the impression that this was some form of mutiny, let me clarify that it is not," Keldorn bit out. "I have no intention of keeping this meeting a secret from Rana. I merely wished to talk with you all about recent developments before speaking directly with her."

"And for what purpose, Keldorn?" Valygar asked. "What did you hope to accomplish with this?"

The paladin stared wearily at the ranger for a moment. Something passed between them, which only irked Imoen further.

"When Rana wrote to you all, those of you who weren't already with us, I'm sure she explained why she needed your aid. To stop the bhaalspawn war and save innocent lives caught in the crossfire. And I know that some of you haven't seen her since you parted ways in Baldur's Gate. You may have answered her call because you believed it was from the same woman you helped before. I believe you all have a right to know the truth."

"You mean people _change_ as they age and experience horrible things?" Safana gasped. "Alert the criers! Philosophers must know of your discovery, Sir Knight!"

"Shut your mouth, Safana." Imoen snarled at the other woman. "We've all aged and experienced 'horrible' things, that's no excuse for how far she's allowed herself to fall!"

"People change differently than others, more news for the scholars!" Safana sang, reveling in her own mockery. "Seriously, girl, you haven't thought this one through, have you?"

"The point I think that Keldorn is trying to make is that Rana is making decisions without our opinions, knowledge, or consent," Aerie spoke up. "Minsc and I happily came to help end a war, but cold-blooded murder isn't what we signed up for."

"Aerie's much better at words than I am," Minsc boomed. "But I must say that Boo and I will not stand idly by while Rana kills innocent people! Though I am a bit confused about Rana not being the same woman she is before. Is this a doppelganger? Is she an imposter?"

"Rana acted alone," Valygar countered. "The blood on her hands doesn't stain yours."

"It does when we associate with her," Kivan replied. "If Rana is known to be as monstrous as say, oh I don't know, Sarevok, people will believe we are the same because we fight beside her."

 _I knew that writing to him was a good idea._

"Indeed," Keldorn agreed.

"Didn't peg you as the type who cared about what other people thought," Valygar pointed out.

"Generally I don't. But the common folk won't trust a ranger with a sour reputation, as I'm sure you know."

"So, let me get this straight," Safana interrupted. "You're telling us all this stuff about Rana to either endear her to us or to have our delicate sensibilities offended, depending on who you're talking to. Why? So those who are squeamish about murder, not saying any names _Aerie,_ can pack up and leave? You said this wasn't mutiny, but it sure is starting to sound like sabotage at the very least."

"No one's trying to sabotage anything," Imoen responded before Keldorn could. "But those of us with morals have a right to know and decide for ourselves what we will and will not put up with."

"Oh, so those of us without morals don't have to be here? Excellent! May I be excused?"

"Please," Jaheira grated.

"No one _has_ to be here," Keldorn sighed.

"Good, this was boring me to tears. Well, since Rana is probably either drunk or killing things, which, by the way, sounds _exactly_ like the old Rana, I'll go make sure Viconia has tattled and correct that if she hasn't. I haven't seen that girl in years and here you all are crying about how she's changed. Can't blame her if she has, but she still sounds like good times to me. It's almost as if you never even knew her, which is kinda sad, especially for you Immy, being her childhood friend and sister and all. Anyways, toodles."

Imoen shot to her feet, but Jaheira tugged her back down, whispering to her to let it go.

"Anyone else wish to leave?" Keldorn grated irritably.

All eyes went to Valygar. The ranger slouched in his chair, returning the looks with a steely look of his own.

"What is the other matter you wished to discuss?" Kivan asked.

 _Finally, let's get this circus moving again. Now that the riff raff is gone._

"It has come to my attention that Rana no longer worships Mielikki, and probably hasn't for quite some time."

"This is _really_ beginning to sound like a trial, Keldorn," Valygar announced loudly.

"She worships Mask now, the fallen god of shadows," Keldorn finished.

"That's disturbing," Aerie murmured. "Why would Rana, a ranger, worship a god like that?"

"She's always been sticky fingered," Imoen said. "It was Gorion who pushed her to pursue her skills with the bow, and the kind of life that ranger's tend to lead. But she's always had a kinship with thieves, and ruffians, and that sort."

"And you don't?" Valygar retorted.

"I might like to pick the occasional pocket or two, Keldorn cover your ears, but I've never gone so far as to worship the patron god of shadows. And let's not pretend that stealing is the only thing that happens in the shadows."

"You're back peddling, Imoen. And this whole thing is a farce, no offense intended to you Keldorn. This war ends with the bhaalspawn, and yes, it was wrong for Rana to hunt a lesser one down and kill her in cold blood, but killing her kin is why we're all here in the first place. And who she worships, who _any_ of us worship, is no one's business. What's this really about?"

"You may not believe this to be a big deal, but you don't speak for the rest of us," Kivan replied. "I appreciate Sir Keldorn's foresight in regards to this information being brought to the group's attention. While I can't say I find any of it overly shocking, it will be a deciding factor in how long I assist Rana. And how closely I'll be watching her from now on."

"Kivan's right," Aerie said softly. "I know I can be naive at times, so I'm thankful that I'm a bit more prepared going forward. I don't like anything I've been told here today, but it is necessary that we know what's going on."

"Minsc concurs! Boo says Rana may need a swift kick in the behind to get her mind straight. Boo often tells me that I need this as well, and he is usually right."

"Thank you for your thoughts on this matter. We have a long road ahead of us and none of us can afford to be blind to anything. Which is why, when I speak to Rana, I'm going to offer to take the position of leadership within this group."

"What?" Several voices gasped at once.

Imoen exchanged a surprised look with Jaheira.

"If no one objects," he amended.

"Certainly not," Jaheira responded. "I did not anticipate this, but it may be the wisest choice. I for one would feel more comfortable with you at the helm."

"As would I," echoed Kivan.

"And me," from Aerie, and a sharp nod from Minsc.

"And if Rana objects?" Valygar asked.

"Must you do this?" Jaheira snapped at him.

"It's a valid question!" He snapped back.

"I do not intend to wrest control away from her if she does not wish to relinquish it. As I said before, I will speak with her when she returns. She may very well be open to at least sharing the burden."

"Well, you have the majority vote here," Imoen said. "Now that that's settled, though, let's move on to the even bigger issue of Rana sleeping with-"

"Everything that I wanted to discuss has been discussed," Keldorn spoke sharply over her, cutting her off. "Go about your normal routines and I will speak with you all again once I have talked with Rana."

"Keldorn, we have another issue-" Jaheira started, but her words stuttered to a stop when the paladin rounded on her.

"The matter you refer to is not up for discussion at the moment. If you wish to press it, then I will speak to you both in private."

Imoen got to her feet, as did Jaheira, both more than ready to argue with the paladin.

Valygar rose as well.

"I'm warning you," the ranger hissed. "Drop this now. No good could possibly come from announcing what it is you both are chomping at the bit to reveal."

"What's that?" Kivan asked, loudly enough that Aerie and Minsc hesitated at the door.

"So you do know," Jaheira laughed bitterly.

"Of course I fucking know," Valygar spat. "Anyone with a pair of working eyes knows. I get it, you're pissy that it took you so long to figure out the obvious, but you show what you're really after by trying to pull a stunt like this."

"And what's that, Valygar?" Imoen asked, almost amused by how fiercely he wished to safeguard Rana's damning secret.

"You can't come back from this. This will start something that I don't think either one of you are prepared to finish. You want him gone or dead. You know she won't stand by and let that happen. There will be blood. Lots of it. And you won't be able to throw all the blame onto her this time."

 _Wrong. She started this when she slept with that monster. I'm merely ensuring that she suffers the consequences. Consequences_ _ **long**_ _overdue._

"Listen to Valygar," Keldorn spoke quietly. "This will cause far more harm than good. I know you're both upset, but this is not the way you fix this."

"What's going on? What are you all talking about?" Aerie asked.

"All of you out," Valygar ordered the rest, not taking his eyes off Imoen and Jaheira, his entire body taut like a bowstring, as if he were considering cutting their throats if they spoke.

"Did you know?" Imoen asked Keldorn, fear and anger coiling tightly around her belly as the realization dawned on her that he likely had already known about Rana and Sarevok.

"Aerie, Kivan, Minsc," the paladin intoned. "If you please, I need to speak with these three alone."

" _Did you know?"_

" _I'd_ very much like to know what you're all talking about," Kivan replied, having not made any move to leave. "If it's another issue like the ones we already talked about, then we have a right to be told."

"Keldorn. Answer me. Did you know before Jaheira told you?" Imoen pressed, her anger growing.

"Someone please explain what's going on," Aerie whined.

" _ALL OF YOU OUT!"_

The shock of hearing Keldorn's roar of fury was so jarring that Imoen felt as if she'd just been slapped. By Gorion. Like she were a child again and had just shoved a parent well over the line drawn where their patience ended. Not that she knew what having a parent felt like, but Gorion had been as close as she'd ever get. And Keldorn wasn't far off either.

"The fuck is going on?!"

Everyone turned to see Rana standing in the doorway.

No one answered her.

It felt like a storm was just about to break. Keldorn's shouting had been the prelude thunderclap. Rana's sudden appearance the first drops of rain.

"Someone answer me. _Now."_

"You don't give the orders anymore," Imoen said.

"Excuse me?"

"If you do not want _my_ first orders to be your immediate removal from this company," Keldorn said, his voice low and yet somehow more commanding than when he had raised it, "You will both keep your mouths shut until I have spoken with you in private. Do you understand?"

Imoen opened her mouth to speak but Jaheira clapped a hand over it and began pulling her out of the room.

"We will address this at a better time," the druid hissed in her ear.

Imoen struggled against the woman, but unless she drew a weapon, she wouldn't be able to throw her off.

"Imoen, please, we can tell the others at any time, let's just let Keldorn speak to Rana first."

When they got back to her room, and the door was shut, Jaheira released her, and Imoen exploded.

"This is bullshit! There's not a single good reason for not screaming out that Rana is fucking Sarevok!"

"There's several actually. I'm upset, too, child, but announcing it in front of Rana could have gotten ugly."

"Like I give a damn about how she feels anymore! And stop calling me that! I'm a damned archmage and of age!"

"You'll give a damn if Rana kills someone to protect Sarevok. Look, I wanted to tell the others, too, but I didn't expect Valygar to react as he did. Also, Kivan would love nothing more than the tiniest excuse to kill Sarevok for what Tazok did to his wife. Because of what happened between him and Rana, she wouldn't hesitate to strike him down if he made a move against Sarevok. And anyone who tries to stop her will have to go through Valygar. And probably Viconia. And Safana as well, though the gods only know what's going on in her mind at any given moment. Keldorn's right. This could set off a chain reaction that could get people killed, Imoen."

Imoen paced the length of the room, hating that Jaheira was right.

"And you are correct. You are not a child. So I expect you to calm yourself, regroup, and figure out where to go from here. This isn't over. Not by any means. We'll see what happens when Keldorn speaks to Rana about stepping down as leader."

"How did Keldorn react when you told him about Rana and Sarevok?"

"He didn't react. I strongly suspect he already knew."

"Which means he's been helping keep the secret just like Valygar. And you wanna trust him to take over?"

"Keldorn keeping this a secret angers me too, but I understand now why he's done so. He's not doing this so much for Rana as he is to keep chaos from breaking loose and tearing this group apart."

"Maybe it's time that happens," Imoen muttered.

Jaheira looked at her, her stern facade shifting to some combination of weary and pensive.

"Maybe you're right," the druid eventually whispered.

 ** _Rana_**

"What in the Nine Hells is going on, Keldorn?" Rana demanded as the paladin shut the dining room doors after everyone had shuffled out, casting looks at her that ranged from wary to outright suspicious, save for Valygar who seemed to be warning her with his eyes.

When she'd walked through the door, ready to confront the group about the meeting they were having behind her back, for which she was informed by both Viconia and Safana, she'd been momentarily stunned by the sound of Keldorn shouting.

 _Mutiny begets more mutiny, I suppose._

"Why is it that I had to be told there was a separate meeting going on, and that it was being held by _you_ in an attempt to turn everyone against me? I'm willing to suspend belief about some of what Viconia and Safana told me, based on the former's bias and the latter's penchant for drama, but I need some answers _now."_

"Jaheira came to me late last night about Imoen's discovery of your worship of Mask. And of your involvement with Sarevok. I was already planning to speak with you about the bhaalspawn woman you killed, but seeing how quickly things were beginning to unravel, I chose to hold a meeting before Jaheira and Imoen took it upon themselves to do so."

"You already knew about Sarevok. Hell, you encouraged it! And it's no one's business who I worship."

"And the murder, Rana? Is that none of our business, too? Just as it was none of our business about what happened at that temple, save for you and Sarevok?"

"Yeah, I'd say that's about right. You'll have to forgive me, Keldorn, waking up after two days of unconsciousness brought on by getting my ass kicked, followed by a meeting with the Mayor, planning to go underground and fight drow in the morning, and then being informed about a secret meeting being held to trash talk me _really_ doesn't put me in the most cooperative of moods."

"Oh, grow up, girl! The point I was attempting to make is not everything is about you! You've hidden too much behind people's backs, with no real justification other than you know it'll upset us should we find out. Well, you've been found out. I was trying to do damage control on your behalf, before they begin turning on you. And I only barely succeeded in keeping your secret relationship with Sarevok from being revealed. For now."

"Why?"

"Do you wish to fight this war alone? Do you want to lose those who care for you? Who have bled for you? Died for you? We've made your cause our own, Rana, and asked for little in return. Repaying us with secrecy, and deeds that directly oppose our morals is a slap in the face. I will not stand by while this group crumbles from within, nor will I do nothing when you act against my code of honor. I will not watch you self-destruct without trying to save you. By Torm I vow I will die before I see any of that happen."

Rana felt a twinge of guilt at that. She'd largely stopped caring what Jaheira thought of her, and the farther apart her and Imoen drifted the less she cared about her sister's opinions as well. Keldorn, though, was too much a fatherly figure to her that she couldn't stop a flare of shame from joining the guilt.

"Now, I'm giving you a chance to talk to me. To defend your actions if you feel they need defending. I cannot abide cold blooded murder, but if you have a good reason for killing that woman, I will listen. As for your worship of Mask, that deeply unsettles me, but that is something I will not press you on, as it is of a more personal nature, and as long as it is not something that is linked to that murder I will let it go for now. With _that_ said, it is still something that I, and the others, should know. Your status as a ranger will be sorely affected if this becomes common knowledge."

Rana dropped into one of the chairs at the dining table, snatched a nearby wine glass, and began to drain it. Keldorn plucked it out of her hand and set it down out of reach.

"You mentioned we're attacking Sendai at dawn. You need to be sober."

She leveled a glare at him that he returned with equal fervor. She looked away first.

"I don't have a good excuse for killing her," she whispered, not meeting his eyes for a moment. "I was upset. I wanted some kind of outlet. I know that's not what you want to hear, but there it is. Do I regret it? Yes. It was a mistake that robbed two children of _both_ their parents, I was nearly killed, and… it cost even more than that. Much more."

"You're telling me you regret it because of the aftermath? The fallout of your actions made you realize it was a calculated risk you took and failed? Not that it was wrong, but because it _inconvenienced_ you?!"

Rana glanced sharply up at him, her anger, which had been on a low simmer since talking to Sarevok, began to bubble anew.

"It's easy for you to stand there and judge me, isn't it Inquisitor? Must feel nice to know exactly where you left those lines you drew in the sand long ago. To know if something is right rather than wondering if it's the desires of another being whispered inside your mind. To be able to fall back on years of discipline and girded beliefs when your faith is tested. To be sickened by the things you're told to be sickened by, rather than feeling whole and vindicated by things that everyone around you has tried to convince you are wrong. So judge away, Keldorn, I was born with one foot in the Abyss, straddling the lines _I_ once drew and hoping they're even still there and that I was the one to draw them in the first place. You don't know what living with this is like. You don't have a single fucking clue."

"You're right. I don't know what it is you go through. Partly because I wasn't fathered by the Lord of Murder. And partly because you don't tell me. You don't tell anyone. Save, perhaps, Sarevok. The irony of a lot of this is that you've been leading him out of the darkness since you brought him back. Either by example, maintaining the shred of control you still have over the taint, or by giving him a reason to let go of his past and look to his future. But in doing so, you've been trading places with him on his journey. Jaheira and Imoen believe he's been corrupting you, leading you astray while you fight to bring him to heel. In reality, the harder you cleave to one another, the faster he chases redemption, but the further you fall just to keep your grip."

"What are you talking about?"

"I wonder how much less your conscience would have been compromised if you hadn't been forced to keep it a secret. You've let yourself be pulled in so many directions by the ones you want to keep close, but that do not wish to share you, that you've ended up straining everyone in an effort not to be torn apart."

Rana gazed away for a moment, pondering that.

It was true, if Imoen, or anyone else, didn't care about her involvement with Sarevok, she wouldn't have had to hide it. She probably wouldn't have resisted him as long as she did either. Which meant he might not have ever let go of his desire for her to ascend. There were a lot of different ways it could have played out, and she wasn't sure which would have been the easier course.

 _Not that any of that matters now._

"Rana, I once swore to you that I would help you fight this… so long as you kept fighting as well. I need to know, _right now,_ if you still are. Or if you've given up. If you've embraced the darkness inside you."

Rana looked at him and said nothing. It didn't matter what words she spoke. He was looking into her, not at her. He asked out of formality. He would get the answer from what he saw inside her, not from what she told him. So she merely looked on, awaiting judgement.

And wondered what she would do when he found the answer.

He was one of hers. One of her most cherished companions. A father figure. If he drew Carsomyr, proclaiming she were beyond saving, if he saw what she suspected he would see, would she defend herself? Could she raise her swords against him? If she cried out for help, would anyone answer? Would anyone believe she deserved to be saved? Would she be able to live with herself for killing a man that pure and good? She deserved death a hundred times over compared to him.

Her pulse quickened as her thoughts ignited her adrenaline. Her swords felt heavy on her hips. Her hands began to sweat, and it became a sheer act of will not to reach for her weapons.

It was like her encounter with the Barbarian. Only far worse.

She was such a coward.

But she would kill him if she had to.

She was already damned, this would only cement her place in Hell. But she would not die today.

 _Letting him kill me won't tip the scales in my favor. The gods don't reward you for not doing evil, but for choosing to do the right thing. And I'm already going to burn, regardless of what happens in the next few seconds._

Keldorn closed his eyes, looking haggard and grave.

Her muscles jumped, the instinct to strike while he was unguarded, unseeing, was so strong that her stomach churned with nausea from the unused adrenaline, her body screaming at her to act.

The seconds ticked by, as she grew sicker from fighting not to attack while she had this small advantage. This tiny window of opportunity to sink her sword into his neck, silencing him from calling to the others. Or from saying anything that would further drive the blade of guilt into her belly.

He opened his eyes.

"Rana, I do not believe you are of sound enough mind to lead this company… nor do I believe that you are too far gone to help. I had planned to ask you to step down, but I feel I must now insist that you do. I will be taking command. This does not mean that your wishes won't be heard, but the final say in what this group does will fall to me. Do you understand? Will you accept this?"

His words blindsided her, leaving her scrambling to process them. Her mind worked furiously to gather together all the implications of this, to lay out the pros and cons before her.

Keldorn had long handled much of the responsibilities of leading. From doling out watch assignments to breaking up quarrels. Advice on strategy to commanding her frontline in battle.

Would it be so different? The title of leader meant little to her, as it was largely an empty one.

"Alright," she murmured, noting a flicker of relief at her response. "I'll step down. Is there anything else?"

"You will be accompanied by someone if you must go on any errands or anything of the sort. Someone of my choosing. This is largely for your own safety."

"Largely, but not completely. The other part of that is to keep me from doing anything you deem bad. And to report on my comings and goings."

"Yes. Those are some of the other reasons for this stipulation."

"Is that all?" She asked, letting it go for now. "Or am I to be given a curfew as well?"

"As leader, I will do my best to repair the rift between you and the others. Particularly with your sister. And Jaheira. So long as you show that you are willing to mend things. I will also attempt to maintain their silence on the matter of your relationship with Sarevok."

"Why? Why do you defend that?" She asked, her pride keeping her from telling him that there was no more relationship to keep secret.

"Because I still believe he has a role to play in all of this. That his stake in your life will help keep you from sliding completely into depravity. I also do not wish to see what would happen if the group turns on you for your involvement with him, or strike out against him, forcing you to choose between your friends and your lover. And that's all I'll say on the matter for now."

"Are we done here, then?"

"I need to know about your meeting with the Mayor."

She leaned back in her chair and briefly recounted her visit with Yeslick, and the plans made for the assault on Sendai at dawn.

"Alright. I will inform the others of the change in leadership and ensure they ready themselves for tomorrow. I ask that you remain in the house for now, Rana."

She inclined her head, and he nodded in return before turning and walking out of the dining room.

She was on her feet the second the door clicked shut, heading for the side door into the kitchen.

"Rana? Are you hungry? We're working on lunch… right… now… are you okay?"

Going down into the wine cellar, she snatched up one… two… three bottles of Burduskan Dark.

"I'll be in my room the rest of the day, Chauntia. I'm not hungry."

"But you haven't even had breakfast! Rana!"

She swept out of the kitchen and headed up the stairs. She was done talking for the day. The next person that tried to start a conversation with her would get their teeth smashed in.

 _Oh wait, that probably violates this probation I seem to now be on,_ she sneered to herself.

Kicking her door closed, she slapped the lock into place, silently daring someone to try and come in. If a locked door didn't get the message across that she was in no mood to talk to anyone, then she felt more than justified for her inevitable violent response.

Uncorking the first bottle with her knife, she began to drain it, chugging down mouthfuls as if she had just found water in the middle of a desert after wandering for weeks in search of it.

 _I'm done with all this. Should just fucking leave._

She began to pace restlessly back and forth across her room, snarling as she replayed the conversations she'd had throughout the day.

Sarevok's cutting rejection of her apologies. Yeslick's news of the children they'd saved from the temple. Viconia and Safana finding her in town, on her way home, and telling her what had been transpiring while she was gone. Valygar asking her to be more open with him. Imoen telling her that she'd told Jaheira about everything. Keldorn.

When the first bottle was empty, she threw it forcefully into the fireplace, feeling a savage sort of glee at the sound of shattering glass.

She resumed her pacing while she started on the second bottle, and as the alcohol began doing its job, she tried to formulate some kind of plan.

Leaving felt like more and more a viable option. Disappearing once the sun had set, not saying a word to anyone about her departure. Let them figure it out for themselves when they came into her room and found her things gone.

Rook mewed at her from his spot on the bed. She went to pet him, but jerked her hand back before her fingers touched him. She remembered the day she'd come into her room and found him here. Remembered the note on her bedside table. Remembered who had given him to her and why.

The kitten mewed mournfully again when she spun away, glaring at the creature, and continued to pace, swallowing more of the heady wine.

The taste of it reminded her of the night she'd reunited with Imoen after the battle at the hot springs. After dueling with Sarevok and being defeated by him.

Tears swam in her eyes, blurring her vision, and when she drank the rest of the second bottle in an effort to drown the growing miasma of pain inside of her, she stumbled as she hurled that one into the fire. Not caring that the embers she scattered could catch fire.

 _I'm already going to burn. No, I've already been burning. Sarevok may have died and gone to Hell, while I lived, but I burned, too, after that day._

Her hands fumbled clumsily as she tried to open the last bottle. Her knife sliced into her finger when she tried to jam into the cork, and she hissed out a curse as the blood welled.

More memories swam to the surface. Of her attempt to kill herself to keep the Slayer from emerging.

A sob escaped her as she shakily brought the wine to her lips, some of the dark liquid spilling down her chin and neck. Down over the scars, the old and the new.

Staggering to her window, she leaned heavily against the sill, staring out into the sunlit world outside. Swiping angrily at the tears, she drank some more, lost in memories, regrets, guilt, and a sea of helpless fury and sorrow.

She sank to her knees, her head swimming from the liquor.

The tears were unending now. She couldn't make them stop, and she gagged from the forcefulness of her own sobs.

Sagging to one side, an elbow on the floor to keep her mostly upright, Rana eventually slid down into a fetal position, arms wrapped tightly around her stomach, knees curled up to her chest.

When sleep took her, she didn't fight it. Didn't care what awaited her on the other side of unconsciousness. Anything was better than this.

* * *

The room was spinning, she knew it must be whirling like a maelstrom even before she opened her eyes. When she did, her stomach heaved, and she didn't have time to run to the bathroom before the wine came back up. She sat up enough not to lay in it, and threw up onto the floor.

There was a sound somewhere nearby. A gentle clicking. She gazed blearily around her room, the setting sun casting a soft golden glow on everything. It would have been pretty if it weren't still spinning.

Rook yowled from her bed, but the effort of trying to locate that clicking sound made her stomach clench in warning, so she ignored him.

She crawled a few feet away from the vomit, towards her bed, but she couldn't make it upright enough to climb in, so she just curled back up on the floor, and let sleep pull her back under.

* * *

Thirst finally woke her in the night. Her throat felt scratchy and dry, her mouth like it was full of cotton.

Slowly this time, she peeled her eyes open, noting how crusty they felt from the crying. The room lurched a little, but remained mostly still. Her head throbbed so painfully that it took her a second to realize she was still on the floor.

Sitting up, a little at a time in case fast movement caused her stomach to revolt, she reached toward her nightstand and the jug of water atop it. Pulling it down, and sloshing some on her as her arms were weak and fuzzy, she drank some of it down.

Something furry brushed against her arm. Rook. His eyes gleamed in the moonlight as he looked up at her. He was puffed up, his fur sticking out so he looked nearly twice his own size. He let out an angry whine and looked toward the chair across the room.

Rana followed his gaze, and saw a figure sitting in the chair.

For a moment, she thought it was Sarevok. When she rubbed at her eyes, and her vision focused somewhat, she realized it wasn't.

Alarms went off inside her head as she put together the clicking noise she'd heard last time she was conscious. Someone had unlocked the door and come into her room.

And been here this whole time she'd been blacked out.

"The fuck-"

"Don't be afraid. It's just me, my lady."

Anomen. Relief flooded through her that she wasn't staring at an assassin. But the alarms still rang inside her head, growing in volume.

"What are you doing in here?" She slurred, still feeling the effects of all that wine. _"How_ did you get in here?"

"I… borrowed the key from the servant girl. I wanted to talk to you. Thought I'd wait till you woke."

His words gave her a slimy feeling. That they were also slurred only intensified that feeling.

She groggily remembered seeing him enter that inn earlier in the day. Or yesterday. She didn't know what time it was, but she knew he had been drinking since the sun came up.

"You… stole the copy of my key from Chauntia?" She asked, slow to realize what he'd actually meant. "What the Hell, Anomen, you're a knight."

"We both know that's an empty title."

Gingerly, Rana got to her feet, leaning against the wall for support, and brushing her hands across her sword belt to reassure herself she was still armed.

She wasn't.

"Anomen, where are my swords?"

"Do you remember why it's an empty title, my lady? What we did together to get me my knighthood?"

"What _you_ did. I only helped cover it up. It was you who killed your own father, though, Anomen. But your title isn't empty, ridding the world of fiends like Cor Delryn shouldn't bar you from joining the Order of the Most Radiant Heart."

"Do you think Keldorn would agree? He stripped you of leadership for killing a bhaalspawn, I doubt he'd show me any leniency for slaying my own kin either. Seems we're both on house arrest. When I returned home, I ran right into him. After he told me about what I'd missed, he barred me from returning to town and informed the servants to keep me away from the alcohol. Seemed fitting that I join you here in exile."

"We're assaulting Sendai at dawn, as I'm sure he told you. You should go to your room and get some sleep."

"I wanted to ask you something."

"You can ask me in the morning. I'd like you to return my swords and leave."

The effort to remain calm and not let her anxiety show was taxing. This entire conversation felt deeply wrong. And she wanted to hurt him for breaking into her room, removing her swords while she slept, and then sat down to watch her sleep. The thought of him touching her while she had been blacked out made her see red. But she could do nothing about it right now. She was unarmed, still drunk, and the hangover was settling in. Her arms felt like jelly and her legs barely supported her weight. The main thing was to get him out of her room and then deal with him in the morning.

"Were you expecting someone? Do you want me to leave so I don't get in the way of your little nocturnal trysts?"

"It's none of your damn business what I do, and I shouldn't have to lay out a list of reasons why I don't want you breaking into my room, drunk, in the middle of the night," she snapped, her patience fraying as her indignation rose. "And nothing gives you the right to take my weapons off while I was asleep."

"My apologies, Rana, I worried for your comfort and safety, which is why I removed them. I was only trying to look out for you, there's no need for you to be disagreeable."

Taking a deep, shaky breath, she tried to regain some kind of composure.

"Thank you, now I'd like to take a bath and get some sleep," she managed to say, grinding her jaw in frustration. "I suggest you do the same. Goodnight, _Sir_ Anomen."

The man rose, swaying a little as he did, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Glancing around the darkened room, she tried to locate where he'd put her swords.

"Do you have any idea how insulting it is to have your lovers paraded around before me?"

" _What?"_

He lurched toward her, and she slid across the wall to maintain distance, her pulse ratcheting right back up again.

"I had to watch you with that bounty hunter. You wanted to be courted by a foreign rogue, one who couldn't make up his mind if he even wanted you, rather than a knight. Then you thought you'd try to actually be discreet with your next one, though I don't know why you cared enough to bother trying to keep it a secret. Maybe to save Jaheira's feelings? And then Kivan. Guess you just can't decide who you want, but one thing has been obvious. It's never going to be me is it?"

"What are you even talking about? Anomen, you're drunk and you have no clue what you're saying. I really want you to leave before you say or do something that'll get you killed."

"Killed by who, my lady? You? You're in almost worse shape than I am. Also unarmed. And everyone's asleep."

Her wariness bloomed into full blown fear, and he must have seen that in her eyes because he stopped advancing and rubbed at his face, sighing with frustration.

"I didn't mean that to sound like a threat. I want to know what I did wrong, Rana. Why you give yourself to all these men who don't deserve you. Who don't love you. How can I make you understand how much that hurts me? Do you know how happy I could make you if you'd just give me a chance!"

Anger joined the panic.

"I don't know how you got the idea that I'm throwing myself at every available man in the vicinity, but even if I've been with as many men as you're implying, that's none of your damn business. And I'm really getting tired of repeating that."

He took a step closer, and she tried to melt back into the wall without much success. She didn't know what she would do if he touched her. There wasn't much she _could_ do. Her knife was somewhere on the floor, but she doubted he'd give her the chance to fumble around for it. And her Infravision was useless in finding cold steel.

"You know what, though, Rana? I still want you. Even after everything you've done. How many men can say that? Can just let go of everyone who came before and move on. I'm willing to forget it all, my lady. I can forgive you."

Rana's hands balled into fists and she shifted her weight as best she could. Trying to call on the taint to infuse her rage, she wasn't sure how effective a hit would be with all the alcohol still in her system.

" _I don't want you, Anomen. I never will. Now fuck off."_

He let out a pent up sound of rage and lunged at her. Her fist connected with his jaw, but it barely fazed him. His hands caught both of hers, and there was a brief scuffle where she tried to pull away, but he was far too strong. Gripping both wrists in one hand, he held them together before her, and pressed her into the wall with his body so she couldn't knee him.

He reeked of liquor and sweat, and she turned her head and gagged as memories of being restrained began to cloud her mind.

"Why?! Why are you like this?! Damn you, Rana! _You took everything from me!"_

Desperately she flung out her will, reaching blindly for the Slayer. Thoughts of what could happen if it came forth were lost as Anomen's voice blended with the cadence of Irenicus's. Gasping for air, her chest feeling like it would burst open from the hammerings of her heart, she squeezed her eyes shut as she fought to find it and let it out.

" _Look at me!"_ Anomen wrenched her hair back, and she kept her eyes closed tight, terrified that if she opened them, she'd see a rotting mask of flesh with burning azure eyes.

" _I am no knight! My vows were all a lie! None of it was real! All I ever wanted was to serve the Order! To be among those who the Bard's sang of! It was everything to me, and you falsified it! Turned it all into a sham when you dumped my father's body into that alley to look like a mugging!"_

He shook her violently, spitting the words into her face like venom.

" _You did all of this and for what?! I thought you helped me because you loved me, but you turned me away! My whole life is a lie and you can't even look at me and say something for what you've done!"_

He broke into sobs, resting his forehead on her shoulder and releasing his hold on her hair. Slumping against her, his body shuddering with grief, she tried to wriggle her wrists out of his grip, but he held on tight.

"I'm sorry, Anomen. Please, just let me go."

"Sorry? That's all you have to say? You're _sorry?_ Sorry doesn't fix what you meddled with. Sorry doesn't make me a true knight!"

He pulled back enough to look at her, and she made herself look back at him.

 _It's not Irenicus. Anomen won't hurt me. Once he gets this all out he'll leave._

"What do you see in him that you don't see in me? Tell me. I _have_ to know. Why Valygar?"

"What? You think Valygar is…"

She trailed off, stunned as everything clicked into place.

" _I know it's him!"_ He snarled into her face. "I've seen the two of you together! In this very room! Embracing! You go out and drink with him! You're always with him! You try to lie?!"

"You fucking idiot," she laughed, and yanked her arms back in an effort to pull out of his grasp. "You want to blame me for failing as a knight, but this is all about your jealousy. And you can't even get right who to be jealous of."

She didn't see the backhand coming, and when it connected with her cheek, his grip on her was the only thing that kept her upright.

"You dare laugh at destroying my life? You think it's funny what you've reduced me to?" He whispered when he pulled her closer, his breath almost cool on the stinging heat of her face.

His voice sounded almost controlled now. And that control, coupled with the blow, and how harshly he pressed her into the wall, opened the floodgates in her mind.

She reached again for the Slayer.

For the taint.

For anything.

 _You look so much like her you know…_

 _Godchild, I thought you had learned this lesson by now…_

When Anomen's hands released her wrists and went to her throat, she didn't struggle. The fight was draining out of her as flashbacks flickered rapidly behind her eyes. It wouldn't matter, though, she didn't need to fight. Something had answered her call. The tidal wave of rage rolling toward her would consume Anomen.

"If you don't leave right now, I won't stop what's about to happen to you," she murmured hoarsely, his hands tightening around her neck, slowly squeezing until she struggled to breathe.

"I love you," he sobbed, and his lips brushed her cheek, the one he'd hit.

The rage grew in intensity, drowning out her own, along with the fear and the panic. She looked dazedly over the knight's shoulder, not even noticing that one of his hands dropped from her throat to her waist. Not even feeling his lips on hers, as he mistook the cessation of her struggling for acquiescence.

The sound of the door opening was nearly lost in the sound of Anomen's ragged breathing.

Rana closed her eyes and braced herself.

Anomen was forcefully yanked away from her, his nails raking the side of her neck as his weight disappeared from her front. Opening her eyes, she looked into the twin searing golden orbs of Sarevok.

" _You! What are you…"_ Anomen gasped from the floor, struggling to rise.

Sarevok stared at her for a moment, and his eyes shone so brightly that she could not tell what his gaze was focused on. Whatever it was he saw, though, sent another wave of fury crashing against her soul.

"It's you…" Anomen said again, looking back and forth between them, realization dawning that he'd been wrong about which man she'd been with. "All along it was you."

Sarevok grabbed him by the throat with one hand.

"Yes," the warrior murmured. "It's _always_ been me."

Rana just watched as he slammed Anomen down onto his back.

"Rana… stop him…" the knight choked out.

Whatever else he tried to say was lost as Sarevok straddled him and brought both hands to Anomen's throat. Blood vessels began popping in his eyes, staining the whites with crimson. The knight tried to pry the larger man's hands loose, and when that didn't work he clawed at his arms, his legs kicking in a desperate attempt to dislodge him.

It was over in less than a minute. When Sarevok rose, Rana gazed down at Anomen's purple and red face, blue and red eyes wide in a death stare. His throat was crushed and mottled in color. Only a small trail of blood flowed from his mouth and onto the floor.

When the dawn finally came, there would be no trace of Sir Anomen left for anyone to find.


	8. Reforged

**Chapter 8: Reforged**

Rana

 _Six hours till dawn, and the assault on Sendai's Enclave_

 _Dearest Anomen,_

 _I'm writing to you because I have nowhere left to turn. Saerk Farrahd, our father's old business nemesis, has begun pressuring me to sell the family estate._

 _It started with a formal, and friendly enough, overture at a banquet I attended in the Temple District some time ago. I told him I would consider it, but not to hold his breath. This is our home, and regardless of how much pain these walls have seen, it has beared witness to our entire lives. This is where our mother lived and died._

 _Last month, he came by and proposed, explaining that his wife passed away from an illness and he would like to remarry. And since I was hesitant to sell the estate, marriage would mean it would be his without my having to relinquish it. Even if he wasn't twice my age, or a renowned scoundrel, I still would have thrown his proposal in his face. These past couple of years, since father's passing, have allowed me to discover who I really am and what I want in this life. Wedded servitude to that ruffian is not it._

 _Now, I believe he's begun to make attempts on my life. Just the other day, while I was on my way home from visiting a friend, a horse-drawn carriage careened out of control and nearly flattened me. If it wasn't for the quick thinking, and magics, of a sweet gnome who had been passing by just at that moment, I would surely be dead. When I looked around, trying to discover the source of what had scared the horses so badly, I saw two of Saerk's bodyguards leaving the area._

 _There have been strange men lurking just outside of the light cast by the braziers at night. My guards are vigilant, and well-paid, but I fear it's only a matter of time before something happens to me._

 _I know you have great responsibilities and important duties to attend to, in whatever part of this world this letter finds you in, but please, dear brother, if you can,_ _please_ _return home. I would feel much safer with you here to protect me._

 _Please._

 _Your loving sister,_

 _Moira_

* * *

"You've outdone yourself, Safana. The handwriting matches the others perfectly," Rana said, setting the scroll of parchment down on Anomen's desk.

"Of course, I'm the best, that's why you came to me, after all. Though, I hope you realize what'll happen if they find his body. I don't think you'll be able to talk yourself out of this. Not this time."

"They won't. Sarevok is seeing to it."

"Well, I suppose he's qualified enough for corpse disposal. I hope you know what you're doing, girl."

"And if I don't?"

Safana leaned a hip against Anomen's dresser and folded her arms across her chest, a contemplative look on her face as she studied Rana for a moment.

"Hmm… I'll bail if it looks like you'll get me killed. No offense, but I quite like being alive. Otherwise, as long as I get to collect more pretties and have some fun, I'll stick around."

"Glad to hear it. I have another favor to ask."

"Oh? I'm afraid I'm fresh out of those, now."

Rana laid Anomen's coin purse on the desk between them.

"On second thought, I've recently restocked! Whatcha need?"

"Keep an eye on the others. And keep your ears open. I want to know what they're saying. If any of them are planning to betray me in some way."

"Getting paranoid? Can't say I blame you, after that little meeting and then getting pawed by Sir Deads-A-Lot. Alright, I'll see what's to be seen and listen in on their boring conversations and report back when I've learned something interesting. Anything else?"

"Do I need to mention your discretion? Or does that cost extra?"

"It's on the house. For now. I'll let you know if my pockets get lighter and that has to change."

"Thank you. Remember, we're leaving at dawn. Be ready."

Rana slipped quietly back into her room and sank down on her bed. The dam that was holding back the deluge of emotions churning within her sprung a few leaks, the foundation eroding away as she looked around her room and the evidence of what had happened here. What had _almost_ happened.

A sort of madness overtook her over the next hour as she scrubbed her floors on hands and knees, an all-encompassing need to rid her sanctuary of the lingering reminders of the dead Knight's presence. This was necessary if her ruse was to be successful, but that wasn't what drove her to clean until her fingers were raw. She needed him gone. If any molecule of him remained here, then his ghost could haunt her, the memories of the shock of being struck, of being cornered, of being reminded of how she'd frozen, unable to fight back and overpower him, because of the flashbacks his actions had triggered.

When she was satisfied that he'd been purged completely from her room, she went and took a bath, making the water as hot as was possible, so that it scalded her when she sank down into it. Down, until she was fully submerged, with only the tops of her knees exposed.

The mark on her cheek where Anomen had struck her stung sharply in the steaming water, but eventually the heat dulled even that.

Opening her eyes, she gazed up through the bathwater, to the ceiling, holding her breath for as long as she could. Until black spots danced in her vision, and even then she stayed beneath the surface. Once the panic began to flutter in her chest, she expelled the air she'd been holding and surfaced, gasping.

When her heart resumed its normal rhythm, and her hair and body had been scoured with a rough cloth and soap, she leaned back in the water and waited for the tears to come. For the anguish that followed the trauma she'd recently endured and witnessed. For some kind of guilt, perhaps, at not foreseeing Anomen's break from reality. At not stopping Sarevok from choking the life out of him. At not immediately going to Keldorn and explaining what had happened.

The tears didn't come. Nothing came. No remorse. No guilt. Just… nothing.

And that, more than anything, terrified her.

* * *

 _Four hours till dawn_

A soft knock on the door pulled Rana from her mindless stare at the knife she'd been sharpening with monotonous diligence for the past hour. She opened her mouth to tell them to go away, but her throat was dry, so she answered with a cough. Sarevok must have taken that for an invitation because he opened the door and stepped inside.

 _Thought I'd locked that…_ she growsed. Not that it mattered. She'd lost all faith in locked doors.

Sarevok hadn't, obviously, as he turned the lock in place before facing her.

He stared at her from across the room, no expression on his face to clue her into what was going on in his head. When the wordless seconds turned into wordless minutes, she finally broke the uncomfortable silence.

"Is it done?"

A nod.

"What did you do?"

"Left the body in the woods. Deep enough that it won't be discovered before the beasts can take care of it."

Her conscience recoiled at the way he addressed Anomen's corpse, sickened at the fact that one of her companions had been discarded, left for animals to devour. The memory of _why_ he was just a body now, though, kept her from agreeing with it.

That numbness from earlier had lifted. Somewhat. She still didn't feel any grief. There was guilt now, a little, but it was tempered by the enormity of the lies she would have to spin in order to cover up his death. And the necessity of the lies stoked her fury.

When Rana had gone to Safana to forge Moira's letter, the other woman had been livid that she'd felt the need to hide the truth.

"Just tell them what he tried to pull!" Safana hissed.

But it wasn't that simple, was it? She could already hear Keldorn shouting at her that she should have stopped Sarevok from killing him. That Anomen should have been brought before the group to answer for what he'd tried to do to her. She could envision Jaheira's conviction that Sarevok's lethality was due to his hatred of the priest, a "good man", and that he saw the assault merely as the perfect chance to cull one of Rana's people. She could imagine Imoen's suspicion that Rana and Sarevok had somehow orchestrated Anomen's death.

Few would have outright believed her, and the ones that did would have been drowned out by the rest. _She_ could still scarcely believe what had happened, that Anomen was capable of stealing her room key, disarming her in her sleep, striking her, and forcing himself on her. Whether he would have gone any further than kissing her, before realizing what he was doing… she didn't know. But she knew how she'd felt in that moment. And that nothing could have coaxed her to command Sarevok to be merciful. Because, if she hadn't been caught in the maelstrom of her flashbacks and hampered by her own inebriation, she wouldn't have been either.

She could still see Moira's face that night she arrived at the Delryn estate. The bruises on her lovely face. The fear imbedded in her eyes. What her father had reduced her to in the midst of a drunken rage. None of the others knew just how bad Cor was. They wouldn't be able to imagine seeing the shadow of him rising up in his son, what she had seen just before he died.

"Do you regret that I killed him?" Sarevok asked quietly, pulling her from her thoughts.

"A part of me wants to. Most of me is still angry that I didn't do it myself. Thank you, by the way. You didn't have to intervene."

Rage flashed across his face before it was hidden behind that impassive mask he wore. It was brief, a tightening of the jaw, a flare of light in the gold of his eyes, but she caught it.

 _This feels like old times,_ she found herself thinking, and the thought brought on an answering wave of weariness. It felt like years ago that they stood so far apart, facing one another, not exactly foes but definitely not anything friendly. Hiding their emotions from the other so as not to expose a weakness. That night that had started them on the path to what they would become. However brief it was.

This wasn't like that time, though. There was no more searching for things to exploit. No wariness of him drawing close enough to strike against her. Regardless of what had happened between them, their days of fighting, their Ouroboros of hatred and resentment, it was over. At least on her part. She had no idea what their relationship would be like now. Cold, if she had to guess. After all, that was what became of fires in the end. Once the glowing embers died out.

That thought made her… sad. What had happened between them had sparked seemingly out of nowhere, leaving little time to wrap her head around it. And just as she'd begun to fully realize that there was something burning between them that she'd never felt with another… it had guttered out.

It was for the best.

And someday she might eventually convince herself of that.

"What will you tell the others?" He asked, finally looking away from her and walking to her dresser to pick up the remaining half bottle of wine that sat there.

"I had Safana forge a letter from his sister, calling him home. He came and told me he had to return to Amn, that it was urgent. That's what I'll tell them."

"It's an obvious ruse. Up and leaving in the middle of the night. On the eve of battle. So much glory left behind."

"You got a better plan?"

"Several, but considering who you'll be asking to swallow this deception, your way should suffice."

"It won't matter either way. We'll be neck deep in drow in a few hours. Once that's done with it's on to the dragon. There won't be enough time to debate the legitimacy. Not until this is all over. At which point I'll be long gone or dead."

Sarevok downed the wine and placed his hands atop the dresser, staring down at the wood a moment.

Her eyes followed the hard line of his shoulders before she could catch herself. Clearing her throat, she glanced down at the knife and whetstone in her hands, forgetting she still held them, and deposited them on the desk beside where she sat.

"If you just came to make that report, and drink the rest of my wine, then I need to get some rest."

"We both know you won't be going to sleep anytime soon. You'll run from the nightmares that the knight induced until you're knocked unconscious in battle, or get a chance to drink yourself into a similar state."

 _No point in searching for weaknesses anymore,_ she thought dryly, _because he's already found them all._

"Sarevok, that was me trying to politely ask you to get lost."

"I know. And that was me ignoring it."

She closed her eyes and ran a hand through her hair. What was he playing at now?

"Why?"

"Logic dictates that it's because I'm not yet ready to 'get lost'."

"Well, you and your logic have a long day on the frontlines ahead of you, and we're now sans a cleric. Perhaps you could use that logic to come to the conclusion that a couple hours of sleep may be the difference between living and dying."

"Rana, I've been trained and conditioned to go days without sleep. When most men collapse from exhaustion, I'm only just beginning to break a sweat. Your concern for my well-being is reassuring, though."

Her heart thudded a bit more strongly than it should have.

"Oh? And why is that?" She asked, aiming for disinterest.

"Am I right? Was that concern?" He asked, studying her, and ignoring her question.

"Of course it was. I'm going underground in a few hours and I don't want my toughest frontline fighter to die right away. Lessens my odds of seeing the sky again, doesn't it?"

The corner of his mouth twitched.

"I see. I was being foolish, then, thinking your concern may be stemming from… something else."

Her lips pursed, and she picked her knife back up to spin it between her fingers.

"Well, you've always been a bit of a fool."

"Perhaps. But I'm not the one fidgeting," he replied, with a nod at the blade flashing in her hand.

"Fidgeting makes me foolish?"

"No, it's just obvious."

 _Damn him. What do you want?!_

"You read too deeply into non-essential details."

"There's nothing about you that could be described as _non-essential."_

The knife nicked her finger. She glanced down at the stinging cut in annoyance. Sarevok let out an even more annoyed sigh.

"I rescind what I just said. About fidgeting not being foolish."

"Yeah, well…" she trailed off, no immediate retort springing to her lips.

This back and forth, their sordid way of flirting, was throwing her. Because she didn't know why he was doing it.

 _Only one way to find out…_

"What do you want, Sarevok?" She asked softly, gazing down at the drops of blood welling from her finger.

When he didn't immediately answer, she glanced up at him. He was watching her, but his eyes were distant. After a moment, he cleared his throat and went to sit on the edge of her bed, putting him closer to where she was sitting.

"I want this foolishness to end," he eventually said.

"And what foolishness would that be? We've already covered a broad range of topics under that category, you'll have to be more specific."

"You and I."

She swallowed around the sudden tightness in her throat, trying to ensure her voice remained steady when she replied.

"I was under the impression that it's already been ended. Remember? When I said I was done, then I tried to take it back and apologize, and then you threw my apology back in my face, yada yada. I didn't think we needed to beat this dead horse any further."

"I'm talking about resurrecting the horse, little one."

"Oh," she stuttered lamely, as it finally dawned on her what he was trying to say. "Are you sure? After all the beatings, this horse is pretty scarred up now."

She hoped he understood she wasn't _just_ referring to whatever relationship they'd had. Looking down at her chest, or more specifically, at the newest addition of scars there from the Barbarian, she tried not to feel self-conscious about them, but damn it was hard. Over the years, especially after Irenicus, she'd ceased to care about her appearance. About all the flaws.

Now, though…

If she wore anything other than armor, the crisscrossing scars on her chest were visible. Harder to ignore. She didn't want to care about them, about what Sarevok thought of them, but her pride could only withstand so much.

And, vanity aside, she knew a lost fight when she saw one. It just _could not_ ever work out between them. Nevermind the fact that seemingly lost fights sometimes, somehow, led to some of the most exhilarating surprise victories.

"Rana, you need worry more about the reasons those scars exist than what I think of their appearance. Seeing them angers me, because they shouldn't be there to begin with, but that's all."

She narrowed her eyes at him, suddenly realizing he'd been intruding on her thoughts with their soul.

"Say something," he responded gruffly, "and I won't have to resort to cheating."

"I don't see why you'd want to give this another go," she whispered. "We're incompatible. All we do is hurt each other. We don't want the same things. We-"

"-This sounds awfully rehearsed-"

"But am I wrong?" She asked beseechingly. "We have our shared childhood and great sex. That's it. That's all we've got going for us."

"Relationships have been built on far less than that."

"They've also ended badly even when built on far more!"

"So we have one disagreement about using Bhaal's power and you're ready to quit?" He demanded. "Because that's what started this. _And_ you decided to go ahead and try to bring him back anyway, making that a moot point."

"You blame me for Winski's death!"

"I _blamed_ you because I don't handle grief well! It's not something I'm accustomed to dealing with! Feeling anything at all is still something I'm learning how to process!"

"Oh, so being emotionally stunted just excuses you from being a dick to me whenever you feel like it. I see," she snapped.

"That's not what I… bah, you are impossible!" He all but shouted, rising from the bed and turning away.

" _I'm_ impossible?!" She hissed, jumping to her feet. "Don't you dare walk away from me, Sarevok Anchev! You started this, now you're going to stay here and finish it!"

He spun back around, teeth bared in a snarl.

"I'm not the one who wants to give up, Rana. You are. Even though you know we're stronger together than apart. Even though we _both_ know you can't do this without me."

"I've _been_ doing this without you! For years! And I don't want something that just happens to make _one single_ aspect of my existence slightly easier! You want me to need you, but I don't want to need anyone! You yourself tried to convince me of that! That caring about others is weakness. You just want that to apply to everyone else _but_ you!"

"I want you to see that the others are holding you back! No, not all of them, some have proven to be more loyal, but by and large you care too much about what your companions think when they mean nothing to you anyway!"

"My sister meant-"

"You know damn well I'm not referring to her!" He interrupted her, pointing his finger at her face. "And you want to bring up blame, we both know you blame me for what happened between the two of you. Even though I kept up the charade that you asked of me, for all the good it did."

Rana didn't have a reply to that one. She'd blamed herself, mostly, for the animosity that had sprung up between her and Imoen, but she knew she placed a lot of it at his feet, as well.

Taking a deep breath, she exhaled on a defeated sigh.

"Fine. I've made mistakes. I own that. I've never claimed to have everything figured out, not even myself. But going 'round and 'round like this just proves my point. This was never going to work, Sarevok. It was fun while it lasted, but I don't have the mental strength to keep fighting with you all the time."

"Then stop fighting me."

She let out a little mirthless laugh, "Like you don't get a perverse kick out of constantly trying to outwit me. You like the fighting. And I grow weary of it."

He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes at her.

"Bullshit. You're weary of this," he made an all-encompassing gesture. "But you thrive on combat, in all its forms. Same as I do. We share more common ground than you care to admit at present."

That hit a little too close to home.

"And," he continued, "part of your irritability stems from being cheated of a kill. Anomen's life was yours to take, and I claimed it instead. Not to mention being stripped of leadership by the paladin. You've also expressed disdain for the underground, which we're soon to enter. The animosity between you and your sister. I could continue, but I think you see the point I'm trying to make."

"You think I'd be more receptive to giving this another shot if not for everything you just mentioned."

"Yes. Because you're not ready to walk away. Not yet." He sighed and sank back down onto her bed. "I don't need to remind you that we share a soul. You're keeping your end locked down, but your defenses have slipped just enough in the past few minutes that I've seen enough to know this."

Wrapping her arms around her stomach, she dropped back into her chair, hunched over, staring at the floor, unable to deny any of it.

She felt like she was being torn in two. A feeling she'd become intimately familiar with over the past few weeks. On the one hand, she wanted back what they had. On the other, the odds of them having any sort of future together were slim to none. The ache she felt now was nothing in comparison to what she'd feel in a year or two when he grew bored of her. Or he died. Or they quarreled about something meaningless and he left her.

"But I'm not the knight," he murmured, drawing her attention back to him. "I won't force you into something you don't want. Nor will I try to coerce you as I did before. I'd planned to wait and let you cool off before trying to mend things, after everything with Winski, but Anomen's break from reality has instilled some... urgency."

"You already planned on trying to win me back? And why would what happened with Anomen have anything to do with us?"

"Of course I did. And if I had been here when he broke into your room, the end result would have been the same, but you would have been spared his drunken groping and he sure as Hell wouldn't have been able to strike you."

"I could argue it wouldn't have happened either if I weren't drunk."

"And I could counter that by saying I wouldn't have allowed you to drown yourself in wine in the first place."

"You have an answer for everything don't you?"

"No," he sighed. "I just had a lot of time to think while I lugged that coward's body all over the forest."

"Well, did you think about what you'd do if I said 'no'? What if I honestly don't want to try again? What then?"

She knew what she wanted, she just didn't see how attaining it was even remotely possible given the circumstances.

"Then that's that."

Raising an eyebrow, she cast him a suspicious look.

"As I said, I will not push. And as much as I enjoy sparring with you, I do not wish to spend my time constantly fighting you just to keep you by my side.

"So you'll leave?"

"No."

"What?" There was no attempt to even try and hide her disbelief.

"I will not abandon you to face your fate with nought but those simpletons beside you. Regardless of what happens between us, I want you to come out of this alive, Rana."

Her arms tightened around her stomach. She hadn't expected that.

"It doesn't matter. Ultimately, you and I want different things from each other."

"I think you'd be surprised."

"Oh? We'll make lists then and compare."

"We're not making lists," he replied, deadpan.

"It would be easier-"

"I want to feel whole again. I want to have every belief constantly challenged because there's more wisdom to be gained that way than in any scholar's library. I want to throw my strength at someone who can match it. I want to construct perfectly sound plans just to watch you gleefully and unknowingly tear them apart. I want to know there is another who understands exactly what I am, and _why._ I want to fight beside one who feels just as alive as I do in the fray. I want this and more. Much more. And I'm willing to take this day by day, mostly because I have little choice in the matter where you're concerned. Now tell me what it is you want that is so very different from that."

Her heart was given a moment's reprieve when Rook twined around her ankles, mewing softly up at her, luminous green eyes searching to see if her lap was empty. Satisfied that it was, the little cat leapt up and settled in, purring intently, oblivious to the debris raining down around it as Rana's world crumbled a little further.

She wanted everything he said. She wanted it so badly that it frightened her. Almost enough to make her forget how painful it would be if it slipped through her fingers a second time.

"And what about the future?" She asked. "Say we try again. Say we win this war and both of us make it out alive. What comes after that?"

"You tell me."

"I don't… I haven't put enough thought into the specifics. But what if I wanted to settle down? I like this house. I like having a home. Something that's mine. What would you do if I decided to come back to it, spend a few years just… living. Nothing exciting. No great schemes. Nothing ambitious."

"Then I would find a way to adjust. I can't promise I would be content with that sort of life, but if that was what you wanted… I would see if I could come to want it, too."

 _Damn him, that was a good answer._

"Anything else?" He asked with a small, arrogant smirk. "Come now, you must have more to throw at me than that."

"What if I wanted children?" she blurted out, taking some small pleasure at watching that self-assurance dwindle to something closer to panic, "I can't… I'll never have… but adopting, or fostering them?"

It was his turn to fidget.

"Will you find a way to adjust to that, too?" She pleaded, needing him to slip up, give her some kind of excuse to reinforce the crumbling resolve she'd thrown up out of fear.

"You can't honestly want me around little ones."

"You're dodging the question."

"It's a valid point."

She opened her mouth to reply, but he cut her off.

"As I said before, and as you once told me, a day at a time. For now. And you said it yourself, you don't even know what you want for the future."

Looking down at Rook, and twining her fingers in his thick gray fur, she felt his purrs rumbling throughout his body.

She didn't know how to feel about any of this. Elated? Relieved? Exasperated? Doubtful? Terrified?

Hopeful?

If the last few weeks had taught her anything, it was that taking what she wanted ended in misery for those around her, and even more for her in the end. She was not a creature destined for contentment.

"Day by day," he repeated, likely answering her thoughts, or guessing them. "You were more than okay with living in the moment before, why are you so concerned about the future now?"

"I could ask you why you're not."

"I am, but I'm learning to prioritize today over tomorrow. A skill I've picked up from you. So, naturally, you change that aspect of yourself accordingly."

"Are you implying that I'm trying to be difficult?"

"No, I'm not implying that. I'm stating it outright."

She huffed.

"It's not that I don't know what I want, Sarevok, it's that I'm…" she ran an anxious hand through her hair as she braced to voice the truth, "...I'm scared of losing it again," she finished in a whisper.

The sound of her mattress groaning as Sarevok stood and closed the distance between them made her shut her eyes. Trying to hide the vulnerability she knew he'd see.

"Then help me," he murmured, kneeling before her, a sort of plea in his voice, making her peak up at him, since even on one knee he still had height on her while she was sitting down. "Tell me you want this, as I do, and we'll figure the rest out as needed. Use that stubborn pigheadedness of yours and there is nothing that can come between us that we can't fight."

"Call me pigheaded one more time. See where it gets you."

He reached out to smooth her hair behind one ear, and just that simple contact was enough to give her a taste of what she'd been missing. That wholeness. Both halves clicking back together.

"You are the biggest pain in the ass, an impressive feat considering your diminutive size."

" _Call me diminutive-"_

"And you're often a drunken mess of a woman who almost seems to revel in making people bang their heads against walls just trying to understand you."

"And here I was, _this_ close to taking you back-"

"But I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss it, miss _you._ Almost, perhaps, as much as you've missed me.

She immediately pursed her lips together in an effort not to laugh.

"I get it now. A few days apart and your ego has been allowed to go unchecked. Gods, I'll have to start all over."

"I have faith in your annoying ability to trample it back down."

"I mean, someone's gotta do it, right? I'd actually be doing the world a favor by giving this another go."

"Self-less of you," he agreed, gently pulling her closer as he leaned in to whisper against her lips, "Tell me you missed me."

"Never," she breathed, and the pleased look in his eyes at her expected, mulish answer was all it took to unravel the few remaining threads of doubt around her heart.

* * *

 _One hour till dawn_

"I wouldn't enjoy it, but I could always kill the paladin for daring to undermine your leadership."

Rana raised her head from Sarevok's chest to give him the look that statement deserved.

"In all honesty, I don't mind the demotion," she replied, stretching her worn muscles before relaxing back into a sprawl across his chest, "He can lead while we do what we do best. Let him deal with the politics that comes with that position. And the mess I left him with in regards to Jaheira and Imoen."

"Speaking of… you don't intend to resume that farce of hiding this anymore, do you?"

"No, I don't really see the point in it now. I don't much care what anyone thinks anymore. They can die mad about it. There's mercenaries aplenty to hire if some of them bail."

"Gods, you actually just said that."

She nipped him, earning her a growl before he pulled her closer, and the warmth of his skin, bare against hers, was enough to let that remark slide.

"Do you plan on ever telling them about what really happened to Anomen?" He asked after a while.

"I don't see why I would. Besides, once this is all over, they'll find out the truth, more or less, if they return to Amn and inquire about him. And I wish them the best of luck in trying to exact retribution for it."

He rumbled an agreement, one hand smoothing down her back to rest at her waist. She sighed, almost admitting to him that she had indeed missed this.

 _Whole._

A part of her wanted to be angry that this feeling was only reachable by being here with him. She never wanted to be the kind of woman who needed a man to make her feel complete, even if they shared a soul. Perhaps it would rankle more if he didn't suffer the same kind of withdrawal when they were apart. This need worked both ways. They both suffered it. Which, in some ways, made this all the more worthwhile to fight for.

 _Merp!_

Rook climbed up the sheets and hopped atop Rana's back, purring furiously. As he circled three times before curling up into a ball in her hair, she looked up at Sarevok and grinned.

"I recall you saying that you would get me another kitten when you slipped up and made me angry. Sarevok, where's my kitten?"

His lips brushed her forehead before he whispered his answer.

"Seems I didn't mess up too badly if you're here with me anyway. But, if it'll keep you from bringing up adopting children again, I'll get you all the damn cats you could want, I swear it."


End file.
